Online Transportation Markets: Performance Models and Real-Time Fleet Operational Strategies

交通运输系统涉及人员、车辆、运输、信息和基础设施等多种资源之间的复杂相互作用。运输系统必须越来越多地在高度动态的环境中运行，其特点是具有相当大的随机性和不可预测性，以服务于要求越来越严格的服务水平的客户。例如，戴尔电脑等公司在全球取得惊人成功的一个主要因素是响应客户需求的定制制造，这种制造已经将物流和运输流程从依赖长期计划交货期的流程转变为极其动态的短期驱动型流程。人们普遍认识到，信息和通信技术正在改变企业经营方式的许多方面，尽管它对运输系统结构和业务的全面影响仍在继续。电子商务和通过互联网的虚拟综合供应链的爆炸性增长创造了巨大的信息流，使得货物实物流动的基础市场能够而且需要动态调整。随着运输服务拍卖市场的发展，运输市场的结构可能正在发生重大变化，其形式是匹配发货量(托运人的需求)和运输能力(承运人的报价)的互联网站。这些托运人和承运人相遇的虚拟枢纽的发展可能会对运输系统的结构和效率产生深远影响。在拍卖现场，托运人、承运人和中间商之间的互动可能会出现复杂的关系，从短期来看，可能会迅速改变虚拟物流网络，从长远来看，也可能改变基础设施和设备的使用和运营方式。这些事态发展对分析这类系统的性能以及将这些机制纳入承运人和托运人(和/或其代理人)的经营决策的方法种类也有影响。除了分析运输服务拍卖市场的表现，这将使我们能够解决提案中阐述的几个问题，这项研究还将探索性地开发方法，以支持船队运营商在这种环境下的决策过程，并审查对托运人经验丰富的服务水平的影响。这些挑战将在车队动态运作的特殊情况下加以解决，以便对随机的、对时间敏感的客户负载的一般模式提供高度响应的服务。供需匹配被认为至少部分通过拍卖市场机制进行。这些问题类不同于传统的静态确定性问题，也不同于它们的时间依赖和概率扩展。这类问题包括卡车和零担卡车运输，多式联运和综合运输，以及旅行维修工和动态库存-路线问题。该奖项是根据运输业工程探索性研究(ETI)项目征集颁发的。

Transportation systems involve complex interactions among multiple resources, such as humans, vehicles, shipments, information and infrastructure. Transportation systems must increasingly operate in a highly dynamic environment, characterized by considerable stochasticity and unpredictability, to serve customers demanding ever more exacting service levels. For example, the kind of customer-responsive, made-to-order manufacturing that has been a major factor in the spectacular global success of companies such as Dell Computers, has shifted the logistics and transportation process from one that relies on long planned lead times to an extremely dynamic, short-term driven process. It is well recognized that information and communication technologies (ICT) are changing many aspects of the way in which business is conducted, though the full implications for transportation systems structure and operations continue to unfold. Explosive growth in electronic commerce and virtual integrated supply chains through the Internet create huge information flows that allow and require dynamic adjustments in the markets underlying the physical movement of goods.A significant change may be taking place in the structure of the transportation market, with the development of auction markets for transportation services, in the form of Internet sites that match shipments (shippers' demand) and transportation capacity (carriers' offer). The development of these virtual hubs where shippers and carriers meet may have deep implications for the structure and efficiency of the transportation system. The complex relations that may emerge from the interaction of shippers, carriers, and intermediaries in auction sites may rapidly transform the virtual logistic net in the short term, and the way infrastructure and equipment is used and operated in the long term. These developments also have implications for the kinds of methodologies to both analyze the performance of such systems, as well as to incorporate these mechanisms in the operational decisions of both carriers and shippers (and/or their agents). In addition to analyzing the performance of auction markets for transportation services, which would allow us to address several questions articulated in the proposal, this research will conduct exploratory development of methodological approaches to support fleet operators' decision-making processes in this environment, and examine the implications for shippers' experienced service levels. These challenges will be addressed in the particular context of the dynamic operation of vehicle fleets to provide highly responsive service to a general pattern of stochastic time-sensitive customer loads. Matching of demands to supply is assumed to take place at least partially through an auction market mechanism. These problem classes are distinct from conventional static deterministic problems as well as their time-dependent and probabilistic extensions. This class of problems includes truckload and less-than-truckload trucking, intermodal and integrated shipping, as well as traveling repairman and dynamic inventory-routing problems. This award is made under the Exploratory Research on Engineering the Transport Industries (ETI) program solicitation.