2025
Authors
Granado, I; Silva, E; Carravilla, MA; Oliveira, JF; Hernando, L; Fernandes-Salvador, JA;
Publication
COMPUTERS & OPERATIONS RESEARCH
Abstract
Nowadays, the world's fishing fleet uses 20% more fuel to catch the same amount offish compared to 30 years ago. Addressing this negative environmental and economic performance is crucial due to stricter emission regulations, rising fuel costs, and predicted declines in fish biomass and body sizes due to climate change. Investment in more efficient engines, larger ships and better fuel has been the main response, but this is only feasible in the long term at high infrastructure cost. An alternative is to optimize operations such as the routing of a fleet, which is an extremely complex problem due to its dynamic (time-dependent) moving target characteristics. To date, no other scientific work has approached this problem in its full complexity, i.e., as a dynamic vehicle routing problem with multiple time windows and moving targets. In this paper, two bi-objective mixed linear integer programming (MIP) models are presented, one for the static variant and another for the time-dependent variant. The bi-objective approaches allow to trade off the economic (e.g., probability of high catches) and environmental (e.g., fuel consumption) objectives. To overcome the limitations of exact solutions of the MIP models, a greedy randomized adaptive search procedure for the multi-objective problem (MO-GRASP) is proposed. The computational experiments demonstrate the good performance of the MO-GRASP algorithm with clearly different results when the importance of each objective is varied. In addition, computational experiments conducted on historical data prove the feasibility of applying the MO-GRASP algorithm in a real context and explore the benefits of joint planning (collaborative approach) compared to a non-collaborative strategy. Collaborative approaches enable the definition of better routes that may select slightly worse fishing and planting areas (2.9%), but in exchange fora significant reduction in fuel consumption (17.3%) and time at sea (10.1%) compared to non-collaborative strategies. The final experiment examines the importance of the collaborative approach when the number of available drifting fishing aggregation devices (dFADs) per vessel is reduced.
2025
Authors
Leloup, E; Paquay, C; Pironet, T; Oliveira, JF;
Publication
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF OPERATIONAL RESEARCH
Abstract
In a survey of Belgian logistics service providers, the efficiency of first-mile pickup operations was identified as a key area for improvement, given the increasing number of returns in e-commerce, which has a significant impact on traffic congestion, carbon emissions, energy consumption and operational costs. However, the complexity of first-mile pickup operations, resulting from the small number of parcels to be collected at each pickup location, customer time windows, and the need to efficiently accommodate the highly heterogeneous cargo inside the vans, has hindered the development of real-world solution approaches. This article tackles this operational problem as a vehicle routing problem with time windows, time-dependent travel durations, and split pickups and integrates practical 3D container loading constraints such as vertical and horizontal stability as well as amore realistic reachability constraint to replace the classical Last In First Out (LIFO) constraint. To solve it, we propose a three-phase heuristic based on a savings constructive heuristic, an extreme point concept for the loading aspect and a General Variable Neighborhood Search as an improvement phase for both routing and packing. Numerical experiments are conducted to assess the performance of the algorithm on benchmark instances and new instances are tested to validate the positive managerial impacts oncost when allowing split pickups and on driver working duration when extending customer time windows. In addition, we show the impacts of considering the reachability constraint oncost and of the variation of speed during peak hours on schedule feasibility.
2025
Authors
Ali, S; Ramos, AG; Oliveira, JF;
Publication
COMPUTERS & OPERATIONS RESEARCH
Abstract
In online three-dimensional packing problems where items are received one by one and require immediate packing decisions without prior knowledge of upcoming items, considering the static stability constraint is crucial for safely packing each arriving item in real time. Unstable loading patterns can result in risks of potential damage to items, containers, and operators during loading/unloading operations. Nevertheless, static stability constraints have often been neglected or oversimplified in existing online heuristic methods in the literature, undermining the practical implementation of these methods in real-world scenarios. In this study, we analyze how different static stability constraints affect solutions' efficiency and cargo stability, aiming to provide valuable insights and develop heuristic algorithms for real-world online problems, thus increasing the applicability of this research field. To this end, we embedded four distinct static stability constraints in online heuristics, including full-base support, partial-base support, center-of-gravity polygon support, and novel partial-base polygon support. Evaluating the impact of these constraints on the efficiency of a wide range of heuristic methods on real instances showed that regarding the number of used bins, heuristics with polygon- based stabilities have superior performance against those under full-base and partial-base support stabilities. The static mechanical equilibriumapproach offers a necessary and sufficient condition for the cargo static stability, and we employed it as a benchmark in our study to assess the quality of the four studied stability constraints. Knowing the number of stable items under each of these constraints provides valuable managerial insight for decision-making in real-world online packing scenarios.
2025
Authors
Baratto, M; Crama, Y; Pedroso, JP; Viana, A;
Publication
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF OPERATIONAL RESEARCH
Abstract
When each patient of a kidney exchange program has a preference ranking over its set of compatible donors, questions naturally arise surrounding the stability of the proposed exchanges. We extend recent work on stable exchanges by introducing and underlining the relevance of a new concept of locally stable, or L-stable, exchanges. We show that locally stable exchanges in a compatibility digraph are exactly the so-called local kernels (L-kernels) of an associated blocking digraph (whereas the stable exchanges are the kernels of the blocking digraph), and we prove that finding a nonempty L-kernel in an arbitrary digraph is NP-complete. Based on these insights, we propose several integer programming formulations for computing an L-stable exchange of maximum size. We conduct numerical experiments to assess the quality of our formulations and to compare the size of maximum L-stable exchanges with the size of maximum stable exchanges. It turns out that nonempty L-stable exchanges frequently exist in digraphs which do not have any stable exchange. All the above results and observations carry over when the concept of (locally) stable exchanges is extended to the concept of (locally) strongly stable exchanges.
2025
Authors
Gallan, S; Alkire, L; Teixeira, JG; Heinonen, K; Fisk, P;
Publication
AMS Review
Abstract
Amidst an urgent need for sustainability, novel approaches are required to address environmental challenges. In this context, biomimicry offers a promising logic for catalyzing nature’s wisdom to address this complexity. The purpose of this research is to (1) establish a biomimetic understanding and vocabulary for sustainability and (2) apply biomimicry to upframe service ecosystems as a foundation for sustainability. Our research question is: How can the principles of natural ecosystems inform and enhance the sustainability of service ecosystems? The findings highlight upframed service ecosystems as embodying a set of practices that (1) promote mutualistic interactions, (2) build on local biotic and abiotic components supporting emergence processes, (3) leverage (bio)diversity to build resilience, (4) foster resource sharing for regeneration, and (5) bridge individual roles to optimize the community rather than individual well-being. Our upframed definition of a service ecosystem is a system of resource-integrating biotic actors and abiotic resources functioning according to ecocentric principles for mutualistic and regenerative value creation. The discussion emphasizes the implications of this upframed definition for sustainability practices, advocating for a shift in understanding and interacting with service ecosystems. It emphasizes the potential for immediate mutualistic benefits and long-term regenerative impacts. © Academy of Marketing Science 2025.
2025
Authors
Matos, MAd; Patrício, L; Teixeira, JG;
Publication
Journal of Service Theory and Practice
Abstract
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