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1 – 10 of 331Amir Rahimzadeh Dehaghani, Muhammad Nawaz, Rohullah Sultanie and Tawiah Kwatekwei Quartey-Papafio
This research studies a location-allocation problem considering the m/m/m/k queue model in the blood supply chain network. This supply chain includes three levels of suppliers or…
Abstract
Purpose
This research studies a location-allocation problem considering the m/m/m/k queue model in the blood supply chain network. This supply chain includes three levels of suppliers or donors, main blood centers (laboratories for separation, storage and distribution centers) and demand centers (hospitals and private clinics). Moreover, the proposed model is a multi-objective model including minimizing the total cost of the blood supply chain (the cost of unmet demand and inventory spoilage, the cost of transport between collection centers and the main centers of blood), minimizing the waiting time of donors in blood donating mobile centers, and minimizing the establishment of mobile centers in potential places.
Design/methodology/approach
Since the problem is multi-objective and NP-Hard, the heuristic algorithm NSGA-II is proposed for Pareto solutions and then the estimation of the parameters of the algorithm is described using the design of experiments. According to the review of the previous research, there are a few pieces of research in the blood supply chain in the field of design queue models and there were few works that tried to use these concepts for designing the blood supply chain networks. Also, in former research, the uncertainty in the number of donors, and also the importance of blood donors has not been considered.
Findings
A novel mathematical model guided by the theory of linear programming has been proposed that can help health-care administrators in optimizing the blood supply chain networks.
Originality/value
By building upon solid literature and theory, the current study proposes a novel model for improving the supply chain of blood.
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Pasquale Legato and Rina Mary Mazza
An integrated queueing network focused on container storage/retrieval operations occurring on the yard of a transshipment hub is proposed. The purpose of the network is to support…
Abstract
Purpose
An integrated queueing network focused on container storage/retrieval operations occurring on the yard of a transshipment hub is proposed. The purpose of the network is to support decisions related to the organization of the yard area, while also accounting for operations policies and times on the quay.
Design/methodology/approach
A discrete-event simulation model is used to reproduce container handling on both the quay and yard areas, along with the transfer operations between the two. The resulting times, properly estimated by the simulation output, are fed to a simpler queueing network amenable to solution via algorithms based on mean value analysis (MVA) for product-form networks.
Findings
Numerical results justify the proposed approach for getting a fast, yet accurate analytical solution that allows carrying out performance evaluation with respect to both organizational policies and operations management on the yard area.
Practical implications
Practically, the expected performance measures on the yard subsystem can be obtained avoiding additional time-expensive simulation experiments on the entire detailed model.
Originality/value
As a major takeaway, deepening the MVA for generally distributed service times has proven to produce reliable estimations on expected values for both user- and system-oriented performance metrics.
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Jing Wang, Nathan N. Huynh and Edsel Pena
This paper evaluates an alternative queuing concept for marine container terminals that utilize a truck appointment system (TAS). Instead of having all lanes providing service to…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper evaluates an alternative queuing concept for marine container terminals that utilize a truck appointment system (TAS). Instead of having all lanes providing service to trucks with appointments, this study considers the case where walk-in lanes are provided to serve those trucks with no appointments or trucks with appointments but arrived late due to traffic congestion.
Design/methodology/approach
To enable the analysis of the proposed alternative queuing strategy, the queuing system is shown mathematically to be stationary. Due to the complexity of the model, a discrete event simulation (DES) model is used to obtain the average waiting number of trucks per lane for both types of service lanes: TAS-lanes and walk-in lanes.
Findings
The numerical experiment results indicated that the considered queuing strategy is most beneficial when the utilization of the TAS lanes is expected to be much higher than that of the walk-in lanes.
Originality/value
The novelty of this study is that it examines the scenario where trucks with appointments switch to the walk-in lanes upon arrival if the TAS-lane server is occupied and the walk-in lane server is not occupied. This queuing strategy/policy could reduce the average waiting time of trucks at marine container terminals. Approximation equations are provided to assist practitioners calculate the average truck queue length and the average truck queuing time for this type of queuing system.
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Luc Benda, Ferry Koster and Romke J. van der Veen
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how active labour market policy (ALMP) training programmes and hiring subsidies increase or decrease differences in the unemployment…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how active labour market policy (ALMP) training programmes and hiring subsidies increase or decrease differences in the unemployment risk between lesser and higher educated people during an economic downturn. A focus is put on potential job competition dynamics and cumulative (dis)advantages of the lesser and higher educated.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses multi-level data. The fifth wave (2010) of the European Social Survey was used and combined with macro-level data on labour market policies of the OECD. The sample consisted of 18,172 observations in 19 countries.
Findings
The results show that higher levels of participation and spending on training policies are related to a smaller difference in the unemployment risks of the educational groups. Higher training policy intensity is associated with a lower unemployment risk for the lesser educated and a higher unemployment risk for the higher educated. This implies that the lesser educated are better able to withstand downward pressure from the higher educated, thereby, reducing downward displacement during an economic downturn. Hiring subsidies do not seem to be associated with the impact of education on unemployment.
Originality/value
The paper adds to the discussion on ALMP training and hiring subsidies that are primarily rooted in the human capital theory and signalling theory. Both theories ignore the social context of labour market behaviour. The job competition theory and cumulative (dis)advantage theory add to these theories by focussing on the relative position of individuals and the characteristics that accompany the social position of the individual.
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Sharika J. Hegde, Hani Mahmassani and Karen Smilowitz
The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework to evaluate and assess the performance of the COVID-19 vaccine distribution process that is sensitive to the unique supply-side…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework to evaluate and assess the performance of the COVID-19 vaccine distribution process that is sensitive to the unique supply-side and demand-side constraints exhibited in the US vaccine rollout.
Design/methodology/approach
A queuing framework that operates under two distinct regimes is formulated to analyze service rates that represent system capacity to vaccinate (under the first regime) and hesitancy-induced throughput (under the second regime). These supply- and hesitancy-constrained regimes form the focus of the present paper, as the former reflects the inherent ability of the nation in its various jurisdictions to mobilize, whereas the latter reflects a critical area for public policy to protect the population’s overall health and safety.
Findings
The two-regime framework analysis provides insights into the capacity to vaccinate and hesitancy-constrained demand, which is found to vary across the country primarily by politics and region. The framework also allows analysis of the end-to-end supply chain, where it is found that the ability to vaccinate was likely constrained by last-mile administration issues, rather than the capacity of the manufacturing and transportation steps of the supply chain.
Originality/value
This study presents a new framework to consider end-to-end supply chains as dynamic systems that exhibit different regimes because of unique supply- and demand-side characteristics and estimate rollout capacity and underlying determinants at the national, state and county levels.
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