We consider a contract manufacturer that serves a limited number of outsourcers (customers) on a single capacitated production line. The outsourcers have different levels of demand uncertainty and the contract manufacturer faces the question how to allocate the contractual capacity flexibility...

RFID (Radio-Frequency IDentification) has been proposed as a leading technology that could help reduce wastage in perishable food supply chains. This is due to their cost-effective ability to reliably identify tagged items as well as gather information on their ambient conditions through...

Despite their implementations in a wide variety of applications, there are very few instances where every item sold at a retail store is RFID-tagged. While the business case for expensive items to be RFID tagged may be somewhat clear, we claim that even ‘cheap’ items (i.e., those that cost...

This paper presents an integrated mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model for determining manpower requirements and related personnel shift designs for the build-up and break-down of the unit load devices (ULDs) at the air cargo terminal to minimize manpower costs. To utilize the manpower...

As perishable food supply networks become more complex, incidents of contamination in these supply networks have become fairly common. Added to this complexity is the fact that there have been long delays in identifying the contamination source in several such incidents. Even when the...

The foodservice sector is associated with a limited possibility of storing foods due to shelf life restrictions, a labor-intensive production environment with various skill requirements, low profit margins, and an extensive set of regulations and expectations regarding the quality of meal...

One of the most challenging tasks in today's food industry is controlling the product quality throughout the food supply chain. In this paper, we integrate food quality in decision-making on production and distribution in a food supply chain. We provide a methodology to model food quality...

This paper addresses the unit commitment in multi-period combined heat and power (CHP) production planning, considering the possibility to trade power on the spot market. In CHP plants (units), generation of heat and power follows joint characteristics, which means that production planning for...