********************************************************************

                                                     Seminar

             Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management
                                  The Chinese University of Hong Kong

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Title	:	Heterogeneous Full-truck-load Routing Policies
Speaker	:	Dr. Ada Suk-Fung Ng
		Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies
		University of Sydney
Date	:	January 6th, 2009 (Tuesday)
Time	:	4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.
Venue	:	Room 513
		William M.W. Mong Engineering Building
		(Engineering Building Complex Phase 2)
		CUHK

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Abstract:
　

The transportation and trucking industry remains one of the most important fields in the area of freight logistics. Recent advances in computing speed and power have led to a wide variety of applications being developed in the field of the trucking industry. Due to the increasingly demanding nature of servicing the transportation of goods between different locations, it has become more important for trucking companies to adopt more up-to-date methods of handling operational activities.

In this paper, we look into the case study of a nationwide transportation and trucking company in Peninsular Malaysia. The trucking company maintains a heterogeneous fleet of trucks, providing long-haul trucking services to various customers across the country. Trucks originate from a main depot (situated in the Northern region), and are dispatched to various parts of the country to service customer demands. Customer orders are received for the pickup and delivery of full truckload goods on a daily basis. Each customer order defines an origin-destination pair. Goods are picked up at an origin location and delivered to the destination location. In most cases, customers generally require next-day delivery service.

Based on this study, our objective is to effectively assign trucks to customer orders (or jobs) in various locations, in order to minimize costs due to deadhead travel between the various pickup and delivery locations, and delay in deliveries. Using a rolling horizon approach, we propose a set of solution policies for addressing the needs to assign trucks to jobs on a day-to-day basis. Data obtained from the company are tested using our solution policies. Computational results show that all of the policies improve the company’s truck utilization.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Biography:
　

Dr. Ada Suk-Fung Ng is a lecturer in Logistics and Supply Chain Management at Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies (ITLS). Before joining ITLS, she was an assistant professor of the department of Transportation and Logistics, Malaysia University of Science and Technology (MUST). She received her Ph.D. from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and B.Sc from Curtin University of Technology in Western Australia. After her Ph.D., she got the Croucher Fellowship (2002 – 2003) from the Croucher Foundation of Hong Kong for doing a research project in the Laboratoire d’Informatique (Lix) of Ecole Polytechnique in France. She is interested in operations research and combinatorial optimisation. Her current research interests are maritime logistics, distribution network design, location problems, vehicle routing and manpower scheduling.

************************* ALL ARE WELCOME ************************

Host	:	Prof. Janny Leung
Tel	:	(852) 2609-8238
Email	:	janny@se.cuhk.edu.hk
Enquiries	:	Prof. Nan Chen or Prof. Sean X. Zhou
	:	Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management
		CUHK
Website	:	http://www.se.cuhk.edu.hk/~seg5810
Email	:	seg5810@se.cuhk.edu.hk

********************************************************************