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Publications

Publications by Maria João Santos

2016

A methodology to incorporate risk and uncertainty in electricity power planning

Authors
Santos, MJ; Ferreira, P; Araujo, M;

Publication
ENERGY

Abstract
Deterministic models based on most likely forecasts can bring simplicity to the electricity power planning but do not explicitly consider uncertainties and risks which are always present on the electricity systems. Stochastic models can account for uncertain parameters that are critical to obtain a robust solution, requiring however higher modelling and computational effort. The aim of this work was to propose a methodology to identify major uncertainties presented in the electricity system and demonstrate their impact in the long-term electricity production mix, through scenario analysis. The case of an electricity system with high renewable contribution was used to demonstrate how renewables uncertainty can be included in long term planning, combining Monte Carlo Simulation with a deterministic optimization model. This case showed that the problem, of including risk in electricity planning could be explored in short running time even for large real systems. The results indicate that high growth demand rate combined with climate uncertainty represent major sources of risk for the definition of robust optimal technology mixes for the future. This is particularly important for the case of electricity systems with high share of renewables as climate change can have a major role on the expected power output.

2021

A bilevel approach for the collaborative transportation planning problem

Authors
Santos, MJ; Curcio, E; Amorim, P; Carvalho, M; Marques, A;

Publication
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION ECONOMICS

Abstract
The integration of the outbound and the inbound logistics of a company leads to a large transportation network, allowing to detect backhauling opportunities to increase the efficiency of the transportation. In collaborative networks, backhauling is used to find profitable services in the return trip to the depot and to reduce empty running of vehicles. This work investigates the vertical collaboration between a shipper and a carrier for the planning of integrated inbound and outbound transportation. Based on the hierarchical nature of the relation between the shipper and the carrier and their different goals, the problem is formulated as a bilevel Vehicle Routing Problem with Selective Backhauls (VRPSB). At the upper level, the shipper decides the minimum cost delivery routes and the set of incentives offered to the carrier to perform integrated routes. At the lower level, the carrier decides which incentives are accepted and on which routes the backhaul customers are visited. We devise a mathematical programming formulation for the bilevel VRPSB, where the routing and the pricing problems are optimized simultaneously, and propose an equivalent reformulation to reduce the problem to a single-level VRPSB. The impact of collaboration is evaluated against non-collaborative approaches and two different side payment schemes. The results suggest that our bilevel approach leads to solutions with higher synergy values than the approaches with side payments.

2021

A green lateral collaborative problem under different transportation strategies and profit allocation methods

Authors
Joa, M; Martins, S; Amorim, P; Almada Lobo, B;

Publication
JOURNAL OF CLEANER PRODUCTION

Abstract
Collaboration between companies in transportation problems seeks to reduce empty running of vehicles and to increase the use of vehicles' capacity. Motivated by a case study in the food supply chain, this paper examines a lateral collaboration between a leading retailer (LR), a third party logistics provider (3 PL) and different producers. Three collaborative strategies may be implemented simultaneously, namely pickup-delivery, collection and cross-docking. The collaborative pickup-delivery allows an entity to serve customers of another in the backhaul trips of the vehicles. The collaborative collection allows loads to be picked up at the producers in the backhauling routes of the LR and the 3 PL, instead of the traditional outsourcing. The collaborative cross-docking allows the producers to cross-dock their cargo at the depot of another entity, which is then consolidated and shipped with other loads, either in linehaul or backhaul routes. The collaborative problem is formulated with three different objective functions: minimizing total operational costs, minimizing total fuel consumption and minimizing operational and CO2 emissions costs. The synergy value of collaborative solutions is assessed in terms of costs and environmental impact. Three proportional allocation methods from the literature are used to distribute the collaborative gains among the entities, and their limitations and capabilities to attend fairness criteria are analyzed. Collaboration is able to reduce the global fuel consumption in 26% and the global operational costs in 28%, independently of the objective function used to model the problem. The collaborative pickup-delivery strategy outperforms the other two in the majority of instances under different objectives and parameter settings. The collaborative collection is favoured when the ordering loads from producers increase. The collaborative cross-docking tends to be implemented when the producers are located close to the depot of the 3 PL.

2021

Recent dynamic vehicle routing problems: A survey

Authors
Rios, BHO; Xavier, EC; Miyazawa, FK; Amorim, P; Curcio, E; Santos, MJ;

Publication
COMPUTERS & INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING

Abstract
Technological advances in the last two decades have aroused great interest in the class of dynamic vehicle routing problems (DVRPs), which is reflected in the significant growth of the number of articles published in this period. Our work presents a comprehensive review of the DVRP literature of the last seven years (2015-2021) focusing mainly on applications and solution methods. Consequently, we provide a taxonomy of the problem and a taxonomy of the related solution methods. The papers considered for this review are discussed, analyzed in detail and classified according to the proposed taxonomies. The results of the analysis reveal that 65% of the articles deal with dynamic and stochastic problems (DS) and 35% with dynamic and deterministic problems (DD). With respect to applications, 40% of articles correspond to the transportation of goods, 17.5% to services, 17.5% to the transport of people and 25% to generic applications. Among the solution methods, heuristics and metaheuristics stand out. We discussed the application opportunities associated with DVRPs in recent business models and new concepts of logistical operations. An important part of these new applications that we found in our review is in the segment of business-to-consumer crowd-sourced services, such as peer-to-peer ride-sharing and online food ordering services. In our review many of the applications fall into the stochastic and dynamic category. This means that for many of these applications, companies usually possess historical data about the dynamic and uncertainty sources of their routing problems. Finally, we present the main solution streams associated with DVRPs.

2022

On the impact of adjusting the minimum life on receipt (MLOR) criterion in food supply chains

Authors
Santos, MJ; Martins, S; Amorim, P; Almada Lobo, B;

Publication
OMEGA-INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCE

Abstract
The Minimum Life on Receipt (MLOR) is a widely used rule that imposes the minimum remaining age a food product must be delivered by the producer to the retailer. In practice, this rule is set by retailers and it is fixed, around 2/3 of the age of products regardless their shelf life. In this work, we study single and two echelon make-to-stock production-inventory problems for fixed-lifetime perishables. Mixed-integer linear optimization models are developed considering the MLOR rule both as decision variable and fixed parameter. When the MLOR rule is a variable, it is considered either a sole decision of the producer or a collaborative decision between retailer and producer. The goal of this work is to compare the supply chain performance considering this innovative setting of optimal MLOR (as a variable) against the traditional setting of fixed MLOR rule. The computational results suggest that allowing flexible MLOR rules according to the shelf life of products and the operational requirements of the producer benefit both entities in the supply chain. In particular, reducing the MLOR requirement in up to 12% does not interfere substantially with the average freshness of products arriving to the retailer, but reduces extensively surplus/waste generation at the producer while keeping a small amount of waste at the retailer.

2022

Minimizing Food Waste in Grocery Store Operations: Literature Review and Research Agenda

Authors
Riesenegger, L; Santos, MJ; Ostermeier, M; Martins, S; Amorim, P; Hübner, A;

Publication
SSRN Electronic Journal

Abstract

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