The antithetic opposition between the cost of inventory and the fixed cost of transportation, which leads to multiple alternate near-optima, can be a primary contributor to the computational intractability of the mixed integer program for a two-echelon multi-period distribution system. To...

The blocks relocation problem (BRP) may be defined as follows: given a set of homogeneous blocks stored in a two-dimensional stock, which relocations are necessary to retrieve the blocks from the stock in a predefined order while minimizing the number of those relocations? In this paper, we...

Given a double round-robin tournament, the traveling umpire problem (TUP) consists of determining which games will be handled by each one of several umpire crews during the tournament. The objective is to minimize the total distance traveled by the umpires, while respecting constraints that...

We study a class of mixed-integer programs for solving linear programs with joint probabilistic constraints from random right-hand side vectors with finite distributions. We present greedy and dual heuristic algorithms that construct and solve a sequence of linear programs. We provide optimality...

This paper considers the problem of joint cargo routing and empty container repositioning at the operational level for a shipping network with multiple service routes, multiple deployed vessels and multiple regular voyages. The objective is to minimize the total relevant costs in the planning...

The Hunter Valley Coal Chain is the largest coal export operation in the world with a throughput in excess of 100 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa). Coal is delivered to the shipping terminal from 40 mines using 27 coal load points spread across the Hunter Valley region. This paper describes an...

Wireless sensor networks involve many different real-world contexts, such as monitoring and control tasks for traffic, surveillance, military and environmental applications, among others. Usually, these applications consider the use of a large number of low-cost sensing devices to monitor the...