Rede, in verkorte vorm uitgesproken op vrijdag 28 juni 2002 bij de aanvaarding van het ambt van bijzonder hoogleraar aan de Faculteit der Bedrijfskunde, vanwege de Vereniging Trustfonds Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, met als leeropdracht Bedrijfskunde in het bijzonder Ontwerp van Elektronische...

A new smoothing approach based on entropic perturbation is proposed for solving mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints. Some of the desirable properties of the smoothing function are shown. The viability of the proposed approach is supported by a computationalstudy on a set of...

In this article we focus on product return handling and warehousing issues. In some businesses return rates can be well over 20% and returns can be especially costly when not handled properly. In spite of this, many managers have handled returns extemporarily. The fact that quantitative methods...

The Port of Rotterdam is a key container transshipment hub for Europe. Inland container shipping is important to connect the hinterland (40% market share). Barges visit several terminals per round-trip through the Port, thus requiring a proper planning support – to avoid planning problems such...

Ports provide jetty facilities for ships to load and unload their cargo. Jetty capacity is costly and therefore limited, causing delays for arriving ships. However, ship delays are also costly, so terminal operators attempt to min imize their number and duration. Here, simulation has proved to...

For classification problems with ordinal attributes very often the class attribute should increase with each or some of the explaining attributes. These are called classification problems with monotonicity constraints. Classical decision tree algorithms such as CART or C4.5 generally do not...

Factory Gate Pricing (FGP) is a relatively new phenomenon in retail distribution. Under FGP, products are no longer delivered at the retailer distribution center, but collected by the retailer at the factory gates of the suppliers. Owing to both the asymmetry in the distribution networks (the...