Xuan Qiu

Supply Hub in Industrial Park (SHIP): The value of freight consolidation

Industrial parks, characterized as a cluster of enterprises situated in one location to share common resources, have played an indispensible role in boosting regional economic and industrial development. However, further development has been impeded by the shortage of land space, especially for the construction of warehouses. This paper proposes the concept of Supply Hub in Industrial Park (SHIP) as a promising approach addressing this challenge. SHIP is defined as a public provider of warehousing and logistics services for manufacturing enterprises located within an industrial park. The research reported in this paper focuses on evaluating the value of freight consolidation, one of the typical benefits of applying the SHIP approach. Two mathematical models of the supply chain in a typical industrial park are formulated: with and without SHIP. Genetic Algorithm (GA) is applied for solving the two models, and sensitivity experiments are conducted for comparative analysis between the two scenarios. The computational results show that through consolidating shipments, SHIP brings benefits to the whole industrial park. Total cost savings resulted from the application of SHIP would increase with the size of the supply chain, the vehicle capacity, and the rates of fixed transportation costs and holding costs of finished products at manufacturers.

A Bilevel Analytical Model for Dynamic Storage Pricing in a Supply Hub in Industrial Park (SHIP)

A Supply Hub in Industrial Park (SHIP) is a thirdparty business entity that leases storage space and logistics services among manufacturers located in the same industrial park. Manufacturers may hire warehouses outside the park if SHIPs storage price is exorbitant. This paper discusses how SHIP and manufacturers interact to optimize their decisions on storage pricing, replenishment, and delivery. A dynamic storage pricing strategy depending on storage length is adopted. This problem is modeled as a bilevel program where the SHIP is the leader and manufacturers are followers. Based on further assumptions, the proposed bilevel model is solved in closed-form. A series of sensitivity analyses are conducted to examine the influences of major cost parameters. The results show that SHIPs delivery charge has little impact on the total cost of large manufacturers, and its increase will not always bring profit improvement to SHIP. Contrary to intuition, the SHIP could attract more space demands from large manufacturers when charging higher in delivery or when the public warehouses delivery charge is lower, and more space demands from small manufacturers when the market storage price is lower. Note to Practitioners-It becomes increasingly common for an industrial park to provide a supply hub for its member enterprises to share warehousing and transportation services. The SHIP gains its main revenue from leasing storage space. Hence, it is natural that SHIP must establish a suitable storage pricing strategy to attain the maximum profit. Being motivated by this challenge, this paper investigates a dynamic storage pricing of SHIP in a typical supply chain with one SHIP and multiple manufacturers. We develop a bilevel model to study this problem and derive the optimal solutions in closed-form for special cases. We provide valuable managerial guidance for the SHIP operator to charge dynamic storage price, and for member enterprises to schedule their replenishment and delivery under different scenarios. Several counterintuitive findings are obtained regarding the influence of delivery costs inside and outside the industrial park, which will attract attention from managers of SHIP and member firms. This paper is limited to certain assumptions in deriving the optimal decisions. In future research, we will relax the assumption and design other methods to solve the proposed bilevel model. We will also investigate other forms of storage pricing strategies, which will shed further light on SHIPs decision automation.

Storage pricing, replenishment, and delivery schedules in a supply hub in industrial park: A bilevel programming approach

A supply hub in industrial park (SHIP) is a third-party business entity that leases storage space and logistics services among manufacturers located in the same industrial park. Manufacturers may hire warehouses outside the park if the SHIP’s storage price is exorbitant. This paper discusses how SHIPs and manufacturers interact to optimise their decisions on storage pricing, replenishment, and delivery. A dynamic storage pricing strategy depending on the duration of storage usage is adopted. A bilevel model is proposed to study this problem between the SHIP and manufacturers. After deriving the optimal conditions of manufacturers’ rational reactions, an enumerative algorithm is developed to cope with the bilevel model. A series of numerical experiments and sensitivity analyses are conducted to compare the dynamic and constant storage pricing strategies, to examine the influences of major cost parameters, and to evaluate the effects of the SHIP on manufacturers’ performance. The results show that the SHIP could achieve profit improvement through adopting dynamic storage pricing, especially when the public warehouse’s delivery charge is high. The SHIP’s profit increases significantly with the rising delivery charge of public warehouse and the decrease of the holding cost rate at the SHIP. The SHIP plays a role in mitigating demand risks, and brings further benefits to all manufacturers especially when their demand patterns are seasonally complementary.

On storage capacity pooling through the Supply Hub in Industrial Park (SHIP): The impact of demand uncertainty

The Supply Hub in Industrial Park (SHIP) is proposed as a public warehouse providing warehousing and logistics services to internal enterprises of an industrial park. One of the most significant benefits of adopting the SHIP is the storage capacity pooling making efficient use of scarce land resources. This paper explores the SHIPs storage capacity pooling effect through examining the impact of demand uncertainty. Two mathematical models of the supply chain in a typical industrial park are formulated: with and without SHIP. The simulation approach is applied and sensitivity experiments are conducted for comparative analysis. The simulation results show that the storage capacity pooling is beneficial to the entire supply chain especially when the demand pattern is complementarily seasonal or identically volatile. Besides, the performance improvement of the supply chain becomes more significant when the demand variance is higher especially under the identically volatile demand pattern.

The Value of Sharing Inland Transportation Services in a Dry Port System

A dry port system consists of a dry port and a number of shippers, where shippers enjoy the public logistics and auxiliary services provided by the dry port. This paper studies the shared transportation services in this system. The interaction between a dry port and shippers is modeled as a bi-level program. The optimal properties of the model are analyzed analytically and an enumeration algorithm is proposed to solve the model. Furthermore, a bi-level model is developed for the direct transportation system. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in transportation are calculated under two scenarios: with and without sharing transportation. Numerical studies are conducted to investigate the sensitivity of the economic and environmental value of sharing with respect to various system parameters. The studies show that sharing transportation service could bring significant profit improvement to the dry port and cost savings to shippers in most circumstances. It is found that carbon emissions are not always mitigated ...

Optimal storage pricing and pickup scheduling for inbound containers in a dry port system.

Dry port is an inland logistics centre offering public warehousing and transportation services for a cluster of shippers located in close proximity. Serving as a potential solution for seaport congestion and capacity limitation, dry port development is increasingly popular in the freight transport industry. This paper studies the storage pricing - pickup problem in a dry port system for inbound containers. The dry port determines the storage pricing strategy to maximize its own profit, while an individual shipper decides the pickup schedules of inbound containers from the seaport to the dry port so as to minimize its total cost. This problem is modeled as a Stackelberg game where the dry port is the leader and shippers are followers. The optimal characteristics of the proposed model are analyzed, from which the best reaction functions of shippers and the optimal decision of the dry port are derived analytically. Then, a closed-form algorithm is proposed to obtain the Stackelberg equilibrium point.

An integrated cloud platform for cooperative smart asset management in urban flood control

Urban flood control has become an important issue for both city planners and researchers as flood is one of the most severe natural disasters for large cities. Although many measures have been implemented for urban flood control, the effectiveness and efficiency is greatly hampered by the poor management of physical assets. In urban flood control, managing physical assets is challenging as it involves a complex asset base with the dispersion of asset allocations, management processes, and information systems. To address these challenges, this paper proposes an integrated asset management platform for urban flood control. Cloud technology is adopted to provide whole life cycle management of physical assets by integrating various management processes and information systems. It also enables the cooperative management between sectors. Besides, the concept of smart asset is introduced to realize remote management and real-time data collection from these assets. In the end, a case study is also given to demonstrate the working procedural of managing a typical smart asset through the proposed cloud platform.

A bilevel model for transportation service sharing in Supply Hub in Industrial Park (SHIP)

Supply Hub in Industrial Park (SHIP) can provide transportation service sharing by dispatching a vehicle to circulate multiple manufacturers to cover their delivery requirements. This paper discusses how Supply Hub in Industrial Park (SHIP) and manufacturers interact to optimize their decisions on transportation pricing and milk-run cycle time, and the delivery schedules of raw materials. This problem is modeled as a bilevel program with the SHIP as the leader and manufacturers as followers. A numerical study is conducted to examine the influence of major parameters.