Papers by masoud khakdaman
Shippers’ willingness to use flexible transportation services
Transportation Research Part A-policy and Practice, Jun 1, 2022
On the Demand for Flexible and Responsive Freight Transportation Services
Several innovations during the last decades have impacted freight transportation as one of the ma... more Several innovations during the last decades have impacted freight transportation as one of the major drivers of global economic development. Both demand and supply of freight transportation services have been transformed through major recent logistics’ innovations such as globalization dynamics, freight network integration, mass-individualized logistics services, digitalization and advanced transportation technologies. Changes in the service deployment of logistics service providers (LSPs) will ultimately transform characteristics of their logistics service packages resulting in the emergence of new service features for their customers i.e., shipper firms. These new features not only influence business operations of the customer firms directly or indirectly, but also change shipper firms’ expectations in the long run. While a deep understanding of customers’ needs is one of the key factors to sustain competitive advantage of firms, in freight transportation less attention is being paid to understand beforehand whether an innovation is appreciated and will be utilized by customers. The innovations in freight transportation services are offering shippers new choices and service offerings which claim big advantages for shippers. However, no one has yet tried to measure these advantages. This lack of knowledge makes it difficult for LSPs to compose multi-dimensional service packages and to set prices in the market. Fulfilling this practical need requires a major research effort, to formulate and empirically model the demand for these services....
IEEE Engineering Management Review, Mar 1, 2023
Contemporary innovations in freight transportation and logistics are instrumental in achieving mo... more Contemporary innovations in freight transportation and logistics are instrumental in achieving more integrated, efficient, and sustainable services in the global market. While much attention is going to how contemporary innovations, including technology-enabled and management innovations, change the supply of services, little work is done on depicting their changing relationship with freight transportation demand. We present findings from a comprehensive study among Global Fortune 500 companies aimed at understanding what drives the demand for modern transportation services. We investigate the importance of three key service attributes that are growing in importance, i.e., operational control of transport mode, service flexibility and ancillary value-added services. We measure the influence of contextual factors on the choice of service, including supply chain strategy, demand volatility, internal flexibility and industry type. This leads to recommendations for shippers on how they can adjust their supply chains in the future to benefit from new freight services. Our findings also stress the need for the logistics industry to adopt modern service choice approaches. This paper is practically relevant for managers of three main stakeholders of global logistics system: (i) customers of freight transportation (shipper companies such as BMW and Zara), (ii) suppliers of freight transportation (LSPs such as UPS and DSV), and the system-level agents that these customers and suppliers are operating within it (government, or industry organizations). We provide guidelines for managers of the shipper firms to align their transportation strategy with their supply chain strategy and seek innovative transportation services based on underlying complexities of their supply chain. We recommend managers of logistics service providers to design innovative transportation services by This article has been accepted for publication in IEEE Engineering Management Review.
IEEE Engineering Management Review
Contemporary innovations in freight transportation and logistics are instrumental in achieving mo... more Contemporary innovations in freight transportation and logistics are instrumental in achieving more integrated, efficient, and sustainable services in the global market. While much attention is going to how contemporary innovations, including technology-enabled and management innovations, change the supply of services, little work is done on depicting their changing relationship with freight transportation demand. We present findings from a comprehensive study among Global Fortune 500 companies aimed at understanding what drives the demand for modern transportation services. We investigate the importance of three key service attributes that are growing in importance, i.e., operational control of transport mode, service flexibility and ancillary value-added services. We measure the influence of contextual factors on the choice of service, including supply chain strategy, demand volatility, internal flexibility and industry type. This leads to recommendations for shippers on how they can adjust their supply chains in the future to benefit from new freight services. Our findings also stress the need for the logistics industry to adopt modern service choice approaches. This paper is practically relevant for managers of three main stakeholders of global logistics system: (i) customers of freight transportation (shipper companies such as BMW and Zara), (ii) suppliers of freight transportation (LSPs such as UPS and DSV), and the system-level agents that these customers and suppliers are operating within it (government, or industry organizations). We provide guidelines for managers of the shipper firms to align their transportation strategy with their supply chain strategy and seek innovative transportation services based on underlying complexities of their supply chain. We recommend managers of logistics service providers to design innovative transportation services by This article has been accepted for publication in IEEE Engineering Management Review.
On the Demand for Flexible and Responsive Freight Transportation Services
Several innovations during the last decades have impacted freight transportation as one of the ma... more Several innovations during the last decades have impacted freight transportation as one of the major drivers of global economic development. Both demand and supply of freight transportation services have been transformed through major recent logistics’ innovations such as globalization dynamics, freight network integration, mass-individualized logistics services, digitalization and advanced transportation technologies. Changes in the service deployment of logistics service providers (LSPs) will ultimately transform characteristics of their logistics service packages resulting in the emergence of new service features for their customers i.e., shipper firms. These new features not only influence business operations of the customer firms directly or indirectly, but also change shipper firms’ expectations in the long run. While a deep understanding of customers’ needs is one of the key factors to sustain competitive advantage of firms, in freight transportation less attention is being paid to understand beforehand whether an innovation is appreciated and will be utilized by customers. The innovations in freight transportation services are offering shippers new choices and service offerings which claim big advantages for shippers. However, no one has yet tried to measure these advantages. This lack of knowledge makes it difficult for LSPs to compose multi-dimensional service packages and to set prices in the market. Fulfilling this practical need requires a major research effort, to formulate and empirically model the demand for these services....
Computers & Industrial Engineering, 2018
This paper presents a new method for measuring and improving production time and cost performance... more This paper presents a new method for measuring and improving production time and cost performance by applying project management concepts and methods. In the context of production and manufacturing industries, we demonstrate how to improve production performance by considering production as a project with limited time and budget in order to track the production progress at any given point of time. The proposed approach is capable of monitoring cost and time of production implementation in an adaptive and real-time fashion. According to the fact that in the production and manufacturing environment, cost and time of fulfilling customer demand can be considered as a measure of production performance, this research applied Earned Value Analysis from project management and integrated it with Gain Scheduling Fuzzy Control to design an adaptive monitoring system to support real-time control of production cost and time. Gain Scheduling Fuzzy Control was used to adapt the monitoring system with different conditions of the production environment. To the best of authors' knowledge, this research is a new application of Fuzzy Adaptive Control in the literature of production and project cost-time performance monitoring. The proposed model in this paper is capable of online monitoring of cost and time performance for different products, at different production periods, and machine centers. The proposed method was implemented successfully in a case study. The results indicated a substantial improvement in production time and cost performance. Control (WLC), Constant Work In Process (CONWIP), Paired cell
Tactical production planning in a hybrid Make-to-Stock–Make-to-Order environment under supply, process and demand uncertainties: a robust optimisation model
International Journal of Production Research, 2014
ABSTRACT In this paper, we consider a hybrid 'Make-to-Stock-Make-to-Order' enviro... more ABSTRACT In this paper, we consider a hybrid 'Make-to-Stock-Make-to-Order' environment to develop a novel optimisation model for medium-term production planning of a typical multi-product firm based on the competencies of the robust optimisation methodology. Three types of uncertainties: suppliers, processes and customers, are incorporated into the model to construct a robust practical model in an uncertain business environment. The modelling procedure is started with applying deterministic linear programming to develop a new multi-objective approach for the combination of multi-product multi-period production planning and aggregate production planning problems. Then, the proposed deterministic model is transformed into a robust optimisation framework and the solution procedure is designed according to the Lp-Metric methodology. Next, using the IBM ILOG CPLEX optimisation software, the proposed model is evaluated by applying the data collected from an industrial case study. Final results illustrate the applicability of the proposed model.
Transportation Research Part E-logistics and Transportation Review, Sep 1, 2020
This paper investigates the willingness of shippers to delegate control over the transportation m... more This paper investigates the willingness of shippers to delegate control over the transportation mode in freight transportation, using discrete choice analysis. Data originate from a large survey among global shippers. The results show that, under certain conditions, most shippers are willing to hand over mode selection authority to the service provider. Using latent class analysis, we classify shippers into four market segments, each with a different degree of willingness against different types of performance improvements. Firms can use this characterization of freight transportation demand to design service packages that will meet the demands of global supply chains.
Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 2013
Simulation techniques have a proven track record in manufacturing industry as well as other areas... more Simulation techniques have a proven track record in manufacturing industry as well as other areas such as healthcare system improvement. In this study, simulation model of a health center in Malaysia is developed through the application of WITNESS simulation software which has shown its flexibility and capability in manufacturing industry. Modelling procedure is started through process mapping and data collection and continued with model development, verification, validation and experimentation. At the end, final results and possible future improvements are demonstrated.
Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 2022
Factors driving the choice of shipper firms for services of logistics service providers have long... more Factors driving the choice of shipper firms for services of logistics service providers have long been recognized in the freight transportation literature. However, the willingness among shippers to choose flexible transportation services, where the service package can be adapted during planning and execution, has received less attention. In particular, little is known about the contextual circumstances under which shippers would be inclined to select such flexible transportation service. In this study, experimental scenarios and discrete choice modeling are used to investigate the willingness among shippers to use flexible transportation services. We estimate multinomial logit, mixed logit, and latent class models for a sample of nearly 200 global shipper firms and calculate willingness-to-pay measures for flexibility. The findings indicate that flexible services are essential in demand-volatile markets. Since logistics services may provide external flexibility for shipper firms, we also study which related internal flexibilities in supply chains drive these choices. In particular, our findings show that it is mainly the volume flexibility of shippers that mediates the choice of flexible transportation services.
Synchromodal transport is one of the recent innovations in the area of freight transport and logi... more Synchromodal transport is one of the recent innovations in the area of freight transport and logistics. In synchromodal transport, transport mode and route are chosen by logistics service providers (LSP) rather than shippers. This lose of control is a fundamental trade-off for shippers against better reliability and flexibility offered by LSPs. Understanding shippers’ preferences when a large number of service combinations is introduced by LSPs in the context of synchromodal transport is not studied in the modal choice research and stated preference (SP) surveys. This research aims to capture the taste heterogeneity and dynamics of the shippers’ requirements for synchromodal transport using advanced discrete choice models. SP data are collected through a web-based survey on the 500 global fortune companies. There are two main outcomes of the study. First, estimating freight shippers’ preferences for the main attributes of the synchromodal transport service such as cost, transit time...
Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 2020
This paper investigates the willingness of shippers to delegate control over the transportation m... more This paper investigates the willingness of shippers to delegate control over the transportation mode in freight transportation, using discrete choice analysis. Data originate from a large survey among global shippers. The results show that, under certain conditions, most shippers are willing to hand over mode selection authority to the service provider. Using latent class analysis, we classify shippers into four market segments, each with a different degree of willingness against different types of performance improvements. Firms can use this characterization of freight transportation demand to design service packages that will meet the demands of global supply chains. 1. Introduction Understanding the preferences and requirements of customers is one of the main keys to the success of any transportation service, especially if their demands vary widely and change over time. Mass customization of goods and services in the global business environment has required logistics service providers (LSPs) 1 to adapt their business strategies toward a more demand-driven rather than supply-based logistics system (Black and Halatsis, 2001). To this end, Veenstra et al. (2012), and Van Riessen et al. (2016), among others, emphasized the need for an integrated logistics network. However, the reluctance among shippers to delegate control over the transportation mode and route to the LSPs has left limited room for the global logistics system to maximize the efficiency and flexibility of the transportation network operations. Eventually, this has also made effective demand-supply integration a more difficult task for LSPs. Delegating authority over transportation modes to LSPs is considered to be part of the outsourcing of a shippers' logistics and transportation function. The outsourcing of non-core competencies in manufacturing, logistics, IT and business processes is common practice in many industries (Rao and Young, 1994). For many shipper firms, however, logistics is still mainly remained at the outtasking level, with transportation-related operations being outsourced to the LSPs, but not the decision-making authorities (Hsiao et al. 2010). In particular, many firms do not outsource decisions regarding the selection of transportation modes to LSPs, since, according to Tongzon (2009), shippers determine every aspect of the freight movement to maintain ultimate control over how goods are transported. As pointed out by Tsai et al. (2012), an important reason for this is the perceived risk of loss of control and visibility once shippers fully outsource the transportation function. However, Zhang and Pel (2016) emphasize that letting LSPs decide
Robust optimization of tactical production planning in a MTS-MTO environment under demand, process and supply uncertainties
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Papers by masoud khakdaman