Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Keynote: The Small World Of Material Handling Rearch, Parag J. Siddique, Kevin Gue, Md Salahuddin Ayuby

International Material Handling Research Colloquium

Keynote Address

Panel Session #1: Production Logistics In The Industrie 4.0 Era, Kai Furmans, Fabio Sgarbossa, Tone Lerher

International Material Handling Research Colloquium

Panel Session 1

Panelists: Kai Furmans, Fabio Sgarbosse, Tone Lehrer

Moderator: David Porter

Improving The Environmental Sustainability Of Pallet Logistics Through Preemptive Remanufacturing: An Integer Linear Optimization Model, Fabiana Tornese, Jennifer A. Pazour, Andres L. Carrano, Brian K. Thorn

International Material Handling Research Colloquium

Poster 2

Differences In The Throughput Performance Of The Warehouse Depending On The Quality Of The Calculation Parameters, David Sourek

International Material Handling Research Colloquium

Poster 25

Impact Of Automonous Delivery And Last-Mile Logistics, Michael G. Kay, Peerapol Sittivijan, Bhagyalakshmi V. Shrikrishna, Bharat Kulkarni

International Material Handling Research Colloquium

Poster 19

Economic And Performance Analysis Of Dual-Bay Vertical Lift Modules, Fabio Sgarbossa, Martina Calzavara, Alessandro Persona

International Material Handling Research Colloquium

Poster 3

A Motion Capture System Framework For The Study Of Human Manufacturing Repetitive Motion, Jesus Jimenez, Francis Mendez, David Wierschem

International Material Handling Research Colloquium

Poster 21

Deployment Of An Distributed Strategic Material Flow Control For Automated Material Flow Systems Consisting Of Autonomous Modules, Christian Lieberoth-Leden, Johannes Fottner

International Material Handling Research Colloquium

Poster 10

Managing The Order Picking Process In For Click And Collect In Grocery Stores, Dale T. Masel, Akhilesh Mesa

International Material Handling Research Colloquium

Poster 14

A Practical Collaborative Material Handling Strategy For Cross-Docks, Hector J. Carlo, Stephanie Santiago-Montano

International Material Handling Research Colloquium

Poster 8

15th International Material Handling Research Colloquium Program, College Industry Council On Material Handling Education, Mhi

International Material Handling Research Colloquium

Official Conference Program

An Optimal Airline Revenue Management Seat Pricing Plan Model, Constantine M. Koursaris, James W. Marion Jr.

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

The goal of an airline is to sell tickets at the highest fare possible, thus yielding maximum profit for the stakeholders. As airline seat pricing is divided into different fare classes, a revenue management system is created and maintained to identify opportunity costs where the airline may sell an optimum number of available seats in both discounted fare and full fare classes. Ideally, under perfect conditions, the airline will sell all available seats at full capacity for each leg of a trip. Under non-ideal conditions for the airline, not all available seats may sell at either full fare or discounted …

Robust Assignment Of Customer Orders With Uncertain Configurations In A Production Network For Aircraft Manufacturing, Jens Buergin, Philippe Blaettchen, Juri Kronenbitter, Katharina Molzahn, Yannick Schweizer, Caroline Strunz, Manuel Almagro, Frank Bitte, Stephan Ruehr, Marcello Urgo, Gisela Lanza

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Production of multi-variant products in a network requires the assignment of customer orders to locations and periods. This is a highly complex planning task, as requirements of procurement, production, distribution, and sales have to be considered. Providing customers with the flexibility of configuring their ordered products after order assignment further increases the complexity of the planning task by taking uncertainty into account. Therefore, a robust optimisation model, using scenarios representing potential customer-specific order configurations, is introduced. By providing enough flexibility to handle maximum work overload caused by the potential order configurations at locations, a robust assignment of orders can be …

Reserved Optimisation: Handling Incident Priorities In Emergency Response Systems, Muralidhar Konda, Supriyo Ghosh, Pradeep Varakantham

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Emergency (medical, fire or criminal) Management Systems(EMSs) are crucial for ensuring public safety and security. Typically in many cities, less than 20% of the cases received by EMSs belong to the extremely serious category and require immediate help. Rest of the incidents typically are less serious and thereby allow more flexibility in response time. Therefore, for efficient management of EMS requests, several EMSs now categorise an incoming emergency request into apriority level based on well studied “triaging” methods. Leading research on optimising emergency response has either focussed on data-driven models for settings with homogenous incidents or on generic heuristics (that …

Quadratic Two-Stage Stochastic Optimization With Coherent Measures Of Risk, Jie Sun, Li-Zhi Liao, Brian Rodrigues

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

A new scheme to cope with two-stage stochastic optimization problems uses a risk measure as the objective function of the recourse action, where the risk measure is defined as the worst-case expected values over a set of constrained distributions. This paper develops an approach to deal with the case where both the first and second stage objective functions are convex linear-quadratic. It is shown that under a standard set of regularity assumptions, this two-stage quadratic stochastic optimization problem with measures of risk is equivalent to a conic optimization problem that can be solved in polynomial time.

Improving The Environmental Sustainability Of Pallet Logistics Through Preemptive Remanufacturing: An Integer Linear Optimization Model, Fabiana Tornese, Jennifer Pazour, Andres L. Carrano, Brian K. Thorn

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

The use of pallets is crucial in handling and transportation processes and wooden pallet represent the most common packaging type in the US and in Europe. This work focuses on the environmental impact of wooden pallet reverse logistics, exploring the advantages of preemptive remanufacturing policies. Preemptive schedules allow the service provider to allocate transportation emissions across multiple pallet components, increasing the environmental efficiency of the transportation process. This advantage has to be compared to the lost opportunity of repairing a usable component earlier than required. An integer linear optimization model analyzes this trade-off and the benefits of a preemptive remanufacturing …

Managing The Order Picking Process In For Click And Collect In Grocery Stores, Dale T. Masel, Akhilesh Mesa

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

Many grocery stores offering a service called “Click and Collect,” where customers can submit an order online and pick up the order at the store or have it delivered. To offer this service in an efficient way while still meeting customer expectations, stores can adapt methods used in warehouse order picking. Once strategy is the method used to group the orders into batches as they are received. We have examined two strategies for batching: order-based batching and time-based batching. From testing these two approaches, time-based batching produces a slightly lower average picking time, but order-based batching has orders ready for …

A Space Syntax Analysis Of The Relationship Between Function And Form In Facility Layout, Alejandro Teran-Somohano, Alice E. Smith

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

This paper explores the relationship between a facility’s operation and its form using quantitative techniques provided by Space Syntax. Space Syntax provides quantitative metrics for characterizing the spatial traits of the locations within a facility which can then be related to operational metrics. Instances of the quadratic assignment problem are used to perform spatial and operational analyses on different flow matrices to study the resulting layouts. The effects of different objective functions on facility shapes are also studied.

An Integrated Network Modeling Framework For Analysis Of Multi-Line Order Pick Systems, Debjit Roy, Vishal Bansal

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

Due to demanding service levels in E-commerce order fulfillment, modeling and analysis of order picking processes in warehouses deserve special attention. With a particular focus on multi-line E-commerce orders, we develop modeling tools that are necessary to analyze the order consolidation delays in the downstream pick stations. We develop a queuing network modeling framework for integrated analysis of upstream (storage system) and downstream (pick system). We apply our modeling approach to an integrated order-pick system that includes a shuttle-based storage and retrieval system, and a single pick station. Using simulations, we test the effect of the storage system configuration on …

Scalable Heuristic For Locating Distribution Centers On Real Road Networks, Saeed Ghanbartehrani, Jose David Porter

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

The median problem is a type of network location problem that aims at finding a node with the total minimum demand weighted distance to a set of demand points in a weighted graph. In this research, an algorithm for solving the median problem on real road networks is proposed. The proposed algorithm, referred to as the Multi-Threaded Dijkstra’s (MTD) algorithm, is used to locate Walmart distribution centers on the 28-million node road network of the United States with the objective of minimizing the total demand weighted transportation cost. The resulting optimal location configuration of Walmart distribution centers improves the total …

Integrated Intermodal Network Design With Nonlinear Inter-Hub Movement Costs, Mohammad Ghane-Ezabadi, Hector A. Vergara

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

In this research, transportation mode and load route selection problems are integrated with the hub location problem in a single mathematical formulation to find the optimal design of intermodal transportation networks. Economies of scale are modeled utilizing a stepwise function that relates the per container transportation cost to the amount of flow between two nodes. A heuristic method combining a genetic algorithm and the shortest path algorithm was developed to solve this integrated planning problem. Computational experiments were completed to evaluate the performance of the proposed heuristic for different problem instances. At the end, conclusions are presented and future research …

Shuttle-Based Storage And Retrieval Systems With Robotic Order-Picking Shuttle Carrier, Tone Lerher

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

Shuttle-based storage and retrieval systems with robotic order picking shuttle carrier are relatively new systems not yet address in automated storage system research. The objective of this research paper is to propose analytical model for robotic order picking shuttle carriers. Analytical expressions for the calculation of multi cycle have been determined by assuming uniform distributed order-picking locations and the probability theory. The proposed model enables the calculation of the expected travel (cycle) time for multiple command cycles of the robotic order picking shuttle carrier, from which the throughput performance can be evaluated.

Batching In Bucket Brigade Order Picking, Yossi Bukchin, Eran Hanany, Eugene Khmelnitsky

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

Order picking is the most labor cost consuming element in warehouse operations. In this paper, we consider an order picking process in a single picking aisle in the forward pick area, consisting of multiple locations (pick faces). The picking is performed by a group of pickers, each characterized by stochastic (forward and backward) walking process and picking times. We assume that the bucket brigade (BB) approach is applied, in a static environment, in which a given set of orders has to be picked. In order to improve the picking process, we suggest a batching procedure, where the objective is to …

Deployment Of An Distributed Strategic Material Flow Control For Automated Material Flow Systems Consisting Of Autonomous Modules, Christian Lieberoth-Leden, Johannes Fottner

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

The modularisation of hardware and software is one approach to handle the demand for increasing flexibility and changeability of automated material flow systems that are, for example, utilised in flexible production systems. In such automated material flow systems, autonomous modules communicate with each other to coordinate and execute transport tasks. In this paper a strategic material flow control is introduced, which is distributed on several modules realised with a multi-agent system. The strategic material flow control agent coordinates transport tasks with advanced logistical requirements, such as sequencing. A transport task states for a transport unit the system source and sink …

A Practical Collaborative Material Handling Strategy For Cross-Docks, Hector J. Carlo, Stephanie Santiago-Montano

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

The current operational paradigm at less-than- truckload (LTL) cross-dock industry (i.e., dedicated strategy) is to assign one material handler (MH) per inbound trailer. As a consequence, each loaded trip performed by a MH to move a load from the assigned inbound door to the loads’ corresponding outbound door is followed by an identical empty trip to return to the inbound door. This paper introduces the monomaniacal strategy as a practical rule-based material handling collaborative strategy for LTLs designed to minimize the total empty travel. In the monomaniacal strategy, after delivering a load to an outbound door, MHs travel counterclockwise to …

A Measurement Tool For Circular Economy Practices: A Case Study In Pallet Supply Chains, Maria Grazia Gnoni, Fabiana Tornese, Brian K. Thorn, Andres L. Carrano, Jennifer A. Pazour

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

A circular economy (CE) is an economic system where products and services are traded in closed loops or ‘cycles’. This work develops a framework for assessing the extent to which product supply chains incorporate circular economy principles, and applies this framework to a specific material handling application, the wooden pallet supply chain. The main decisions affecting circularity and the most common decision alternatives for the wooden pallet supply chain are identified for the Pre-manufacturing, manufacturing, product delivery, customer use, and end-of-life phases. A streamlined life cycle assessment tool is developed for supporting a quick analysis about how the level of …

On The Unique Features And Benefits Of On-Demand Distribution Models, Jennifer A. Pazour, Kaan Unnu

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

To close the gap between current distribution operations and today’s customer expectations, firms need to think differently about how resources are acquired, managed and allocated to fulfill customer requests. Rather than optimize planned resource capacity acquired through ownership or long- term partnerships, this work focuses on a specific supply-side innovation – on-demand distribution platforms. On-demand distribution systems move, store, and fulfill goods by matching autonomous suppliers' resources (warehouse space, fulfillment capacity, truck space, delivery services) to requests on-demand. On-demand warehousing systems can provide resource elasticity by allowing capacity decisions to be made at a finer granularity (at the pallet-level) and …

Synthetic Order Data Generator For Picking Data, Mohammadnaser Ansari, Behnam Rasoolian, Jeffrey S. Smith

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

Sample data are in high demand for testing and benchmarking purposes. Like many other fields, warehousing and specifically order picking process are not exempt from the need for sample data. Sample data are used in order picking pro- cesses as a way of testing new methodologies such as new routing and new storage allocation approaches. Unfortunately, access to real order picking data is limited because of confidentiality and privacy issues which make it difficult to obtain practical results from the new methodologies. On the other hand, order data follows a highly complex and correlated structure that cannot be easily extracted …

Optimization Of A Fast-Pick Area In A Cosmetics Distribution Center, Mario C. Velez-Gallego, Alice E. Smith

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

Fast-pick areas are commonly used in order picking warehouses to improve labor efficiency by concentrating picking activities within a compact area, thus minimizing the distance traveled by the pickers. One problem that must be solved when a fast-pick area is to be implemented is the so-called assignment-allocation problem. This deals with deciding which products should be assigned to the fast-pick area, and how much space should be allocated to these products. This research was motivated by the picking operation of a cosmetics distribution center where several fast-pick areas are in place. A mixed integer linear programming formulation is proposed for …

Service Flow Networks For Functional Design Of Distribution Centers, Michael Schmidt, Detlef Spee, Michael Ten Hompel

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

This work deals with the determination of an approach for concept planning of distribution centers. For this purpose, the "Distribution Center Design Process" is defined. Solution concepts for logistics centers are developed and evaluated in an eight-step process. In particular, it will be focused on formalization of the functional area, which has not been considered scientifically, yet. This results, among other things, in the definition of services and basic transformation properties of handling units. These can be used to create and semantically test service flow networks, which describe the functional sequence and transformations of service objects in distribution centers.