ITR/Collaborative Research: (ECS)-(dmc) - Collaborative Logistics

这项拨款为方法和技术的发展提供资金，以支持有效的公司间物流合作。这种合作的例子包括：拥有不同运输网络的承运人之间的合作，为需要在出发地和目的地之间通过多个网络运输货物的客户提供综合服务，例如不同铁路网络之间的合作，航空公司和航运公司之间的联盟，以及托运人之间的合作，为承运人提供捆绑运输，以减少空重新定位成本。为了实现这种合作，必须解决各种敏感和重要的问题，包括确定应该共享哪些信息以及何时共享，以及确定在合作者之间分配成本和收益的规则。要使合作持续下去，所有参与者必须在合作安排下获得更好的利益，这对合作安排的设计提出了严格的要求。研究人员将研究管理实际和可持续物流合作的基本原则。我们将研究各种合作安排。我们将根据每一种安排下是否存在稳定的合作，以及每一种安排对总福利和福利分配的影响，对这些安排进行比较。为了研究各种协作安排，必须解决计算困难的问题。这些问题的例子是具有平衡约束的确定性和随机数学规划。研究人员将开发新的算法来解决这些问题。如果成功，这项研究将导致协作安排的比较，并为各种物流应用的这种安排的设计建立指导方针。研究结果将提供洞察哪些信息应该共享，什么时候应该共享，共享信息的价值是什么，以及如何在协作者之间分配成本和收益，以使协作对所有参与者都有益。这项研究将带来新的算法和计算工具，以解决协同物流设计和运作中出现的问题。这项研究的成功完成可能对运输服务的使用者和提供者有价值，从而对整个经济也有价值。

This grant provides funding for the development of methodology and technology to support effective inter-company logistics collaboration. Examples of such collaborations include collaboration between carriers with different transportation networks to provide integrated services to customers who need goods to be transported over more than one network between origins and destinations, such as collaboration between different rail networks and alliances between airlines and shipping lines, and collaboration between shippers to offer bundles of shipments to carriers that will reduce empty repositioning costs. Various sensitive and important issues have to be addressed to enable such collaboration, including the determination of what information should be shared and when it should be shared, and the determination of the rules according to which costs and benefits will be distributed between collaborators. For collaboration to be sustainable, all participants have to be better off under the collaborative arrangements, which places stringent requirements on the design of such arrangements. The researchers will investigate fundamental principles governing practical and sustainable logistics collaborations. Various collaborative arrangements will be investigated. These arrangements will be compared based on the existence of stable collaborations under each arrangement, and the impact of each on total welfare as well as the distribution of the welfare. In order to study various collaborative arrangements, problems will have to be solved that are computationally hard. Examples of these problems are deterministic and stochastic mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints. The researchers will develop new algorithms to solve these problems.If successful, this research will lead to a comparison of collaborative arrangements and the establishment of guidelines for the design of such arrangements for various logistics applications. The results will provide insight into what information should be shared and when the information should be shared, what the value of the shared information is, and how costs and benefits should be distributed between collaborators for the collaboration to be beneficial to all participants. The research will lead to new algorithms and computational tools to solve the problems that arise in the design and operation of collaborative logistics. Successful completion of this research may be of value to users and providers of transportation services, and thus to the economy at large.