Business Commons^™

Exploiting Knowledge About Future Demands For Real-Time Vehicle Dispatching, Soumia Ichoua, Michel Gendreau, Jean Yves Potvin

Soumia Ichoua

An important, but seldom investigated issue in the field of dynamic vehicle routing and dispatching is how to exploit information about future events to improve decision making. In this paper, we address this issue in a real-time setting with a strategy based on probabilistic knowledge about future request arrivals to better manage the fleet of vehicles. More precisely, the new strategy introduces dummy customers (representing forecasted requests) in vehicle routes to provide a good coverage of the territory. This strategy is assessed through computational experiments performed in a simulated environment.

Psum: Training In Google Glass And Android, Keith R. Macarthur, Sarah Greenstein, Ben Sawyer

Keith Reid MacArthur

Direct Neighbor Search, Jilian Zhang, Kyriakos Mouratidis, Hwee Hwa Pang

Kyriakos MOURATIDIS

In this paper we study a novel query type, called direct neighbor query. Two objects in a dataset are direct neighbors (DNs) if a window selection may exclusively retrieve these two objects. Given a source object, a DN search computes all of its direct neighbors in the dataset. The DNs define a new type of affinity that differs from existing formulations (e.g., nearest neighbors, nearest surrounders, reverse nearest neighbors, etc.) and finds application in domains where user interests are expressed in the form of windows, i.e., multi-attribute range selections. Drawing on key properties of the DN relationship, we develop an …

Budgeted Personalized Incentive Approaches For Smoothing Congestion In Resource Networks, Pradeep Varakantham, Na Fu, William Yeoh, Shih-Fen Cheng, Hoong Chuin Lau

Shih-Fen CHENG

Congestion occurs when there is competition for resources by sel sh agents. In this paper, we are concerned with smoothing out congestion in a network of resources by using personalized well-timed in- centives that are subject to budget constraints. To that end, we provide: (i) a mathematical formulation that computes equilibrium for the re- source sharing congestion game with incentives and budget constraints; (ii) an integrated approach that scales to larger problems by exploiting the factored network structure and approximating the attained equilib- rium; (iii) an iterative best response algorithm for solving the uncon- strained version (no budget) of the …

A Multi-Objective Memetic Algorithm For Vehicle Resource Allocation In Sustainable Transportation Planning, Hoong Chuin Lau, Lucas Agussurja, Shih-Fen Cheng, Pang Jin Tan

Shih-Fen CHENG

Sustainable supply chain management has been an increasingly important topic of research in recent years. At the strategic level, there are computational models which study supply and distribution networks with environmental considerations. At the operational level, there are, for example, routing and scheduling models which are constrained by carbon emissions. Our paper explores work in tactical planning with regards to vehicle resource allocation from distribution centers to customer locations in a multi-echelon logistics network. We formulate the bi-objective optimization problem exactly and design a memetic algorithm to efficiently derive an approximate Pareto front. We illustrate the applicability of our approach …

An Agent-Based Simulation Approach To Experience Management In Theme Parks, Shih-Fen Cheng, Larry Junjie Lin, Jiali Du, Hoong Chuin Lau, Pradeep Reddy Varakantham

Shih-Fen CHENG

In this paper, we illustrate how massive agent-based simulation can be used to investigate an exciting new application domain of experience management in theme parks, which covers topics like congestion control, incentive design, and revenue management. Since all visitors are heterogeneous and self-interested, we argue that a high-quality agent-based simulation is necessary for studying various problems related to experience management. As in most agent-base simulations, a sound understanding of micro-level behaviors is essential to construct high-quality models. To achieve this, we designed and conducted a first-of-its-kind real-world experiment that helps us understand how typical visitors behave in a theme-park environment. …

Interacting Knapsack Problem In Designing Resource Bundles, Truong Huy D. Nguyen, Pradeep Reddy Varakantham, Hoong Chuin Lau, Shih-Fen Cheng

Shih-Fen CHENG

In many real-life businesses, the service provider/seller keeps a log of the visitors’ behavior as a way to assess the efficiency of the current business/operation model and find room for improvement. For example, by tracking when visitors entering attractions in a theme park, theme park owners can detect when and where congestion may occur, thus having contingency plans to reroute the visitors accordingly. Similarly, a Cable TV service provider can track channel switching events at each household to identify uninteresting channels. Subsequently, the repertoire of channels up for subscription can evolve over time to better serve the entertainment demand of …

Food Product Target Market Prioritization Using Mcdm Approaches, Mohammadsadegh Mobin, Mohammad Dehghanimohammadabadi, Christian Salmon

Mohammadsadegh Mobin

This paper applies multiple Multi-Criteria Decision Management (MCDM) methods as a mechanism for identifying international markets for a producing nation’s food production. The specific application presented in this paper is for export markets of Iranian Pistachios; however, the model could be applicable across multiple food products and nations. Quantitative and qualitative criteria for market assessment were identified via a literature review. These include: 1) Regulation criterion, 2) Cultural criterion, 3) Transportation distance criterion, 4) Economy criterion, 5) Market potential criterion, 6) Politics criterion, 7) Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA). Shannon’s Entropy method was applied to weight criteria based upon the context-dependent …

Transport Replacement And Sustainability Aspects Associated With Additive Manufacturing, Marcus R. Wigan

Marcus R Wigan

Additive manufacturing has a range of characteristics that suggest enhancements to sustainability should be possible. The nature of the process influences not only how products can be made, but also how they can be delivered. Logistics and the global supply chain are central aspects to manufacturing, and considerable attention is being paid to making the supply chain more sustainable. This often makes sound economic sense without any consideration of the environmental benefits, as this usually delivers energy reductions and reduced reworking or redelivery. Additive manufacturing has also secured increasing attention from a sustainability standpoint, but this has in the main …