Despite the independency of companies in a supply chain as a network of separated business units which produce altogether the value for final customers, companies are dependent on resources and... Show More

Despite the independency of companies in a supply chain as a network of separated business units which produce altogether the value for final customers, companies are dependent on resources and information of other members of the supply chains. To manage the use of resources and information, supply chain management plays a major role to coordinate independent companies by using the coordination mechanisms. According to the literature of supply chain management, some mechanisms largely use the information shared by members to achieve an optimal solution and some others are based on minimum level of information sharing. Planning based on minimum level of information sharing could increase the complexity of supply chain management and the complexity is ever higher when number of independent members in a supply network augments. This research addresses the problem coordination in a supply chain with more than two partners, while the information in a private element, which is not exchanged with other partners.

Development of simulation models allows performance analysis of multi-echelon inventory networks, and this part of supply chain is not well-established research area. Moreover, by encapsulating all... Show More

Development of simulation models allows performance analysis of multi-echelon inventory networks, and this part of supply chain is not well-established research area. Moreover, by encapsulating all major characteristics of multi-echelon system, the simulation modeling does not allow only its study, but also it provides the means to achieve the desired system performance. This paper deals with a multi-echelon distribution inventory system made of suppliers, distributors and retailers. The retailer faces stochastic demands placed by customers and replenishing from its distributor, which in turn procures from its supplier at the upstream of the chain. The main purpose of this simulation model is to analyze the multi-echelon distribution system behavior according some key performance metrics such as cost and backorder, as well as customer service level at each echelon.

In recent years, the European hospital sector suffers the brunt of the economic crisis. This sector is now faced with a paradox, which is to reduce costs, related to the decline in government... Show More

In recent years, the European hospital sector suffers the brunt of the economic crisis. This sector is now faced with a paradox, which is to reduce costs, related to the decline in government subsidies and an increase in the quality of care required by the regulatory bodies. This paradox can be resolved through the optimization of the hospital supply chain. Despite hospital supply chains having a great impact on hospital budgets, still opportunities for optimization exist and improve the health care quality. This article aims to propose a conceptual framework that allows hospitals to evaluate the performance of their pharmaceutical supply chains in order to identify bottlenecks and cost reduction opportunities. After reviewing the literature regarding to the hospital supply chain and the performance measurement, the authors focused on the study of hospital processes of pharmaceutical distribution within the hospital. The findings of this study propose a conceptual framework that will allow hospital to measure the performance of their pharmaceutical supply chain.

This paper proposes a simulation model to analyze the handling and the transfer system of containers in Le Havre seaport. The decision variables of simulation are determined by using the CPLEX... Show More

This paper proposes a simulation model to analyze the handling and the transfer system of containers in Le Havre seaport. The decision variables of simulation are determined by using the CPLEX optimization software. The goal is to determine the least expensive strategy for the transfer of a set of containers between container terminals. The simulation model is developed using an object-oriented approach and Flexsim CT simulation software. The objective is to obtain an efficient operating process for the multimodal terminal of Le Havre which is an intermediate platform for transferring containers (collection and delivery) by rail and river (trains and barges). The goal is to evaluate the performance of the containers transfer by rail shuttles between the future multimodal terminal and the maritime terminals. The aim is to analyze and to evaluate performance indicators of port logistics chain (costs, resource occupancy rate, service rate), and to test several management strategies.

This study formulates an innovative aircraft preventive maintenance model by taking into account the aircraft on ground (AOG) problem. The proposed model is solved by using binary particle swarm... Show More

This study formulates an innovative aircraft preventive maintenance model by taking into account the aircraft on ground (AOG) problem. The proposed model is solved by using binary particle swarm optimization (BPSO) and Genetic Algorithm (GA). It also proposes a methodology solution based on BPSO and GA to solve the airline crew scheduling problem. Additionally, a study of computational results is given to improve the quality of the solutions and the performance of the proposed algorithms.

In order to better manage and optimize supply chain, a reliable prediction of future demand is needed. The difficulty of forecasting demand is due mainly to the fact that heterogeneous factors may... Show More

In order to better manage and optimize supply chain, a reliable prediction of future demand is needed. The difficulty of forecasting demand is due mainly to the fact that heterogeneous factors may affect it. Analyzing such kind of data by using classical time series forecasting methods, will fail to capture such dependency of factors. This paper is released to present a forecasting approach of two stages which combines the recent methods X13-ARIMA-SEATS and Support Vector Regression (SVR). The aim of the first one is to remove the calendar effect, while the purpose of the second one is to forecast the demand after the removal of this effect. This approach is applied to three different case studies and compared to the forecasting method based on SVR alone.