This paper investigates the development and application of a general meta-heuristic, Meta-RaPS (meta-heuristic for randomized priority search), to the traveling salesman problem (TSP). The Meta-RaPS approach is tested on several established test sets. The Meta-RaPS approach outperformed most...

Internet retailing models support supply chains where consumer order locations are decoupled from inventory locations. In this setting, retailers dynamically consider inventory location speculation and postponement to fulfill their orders. Particularly, retailers can manage inventory to fulfill...

The main contribution of this research is to offer a theoretical explicative model and provide empirical evidence to the determinant variables which explain the behaviour of maritime imports and exports for a particular economy such as the Spanish one. Until now, maritime transport demand...

This paper presents a guided local search heuristic to solve a vehicle routing problem with backhauls and time windows. The VRPBTW with and without customer precedence are both considered. Customer precedence requires that all linehaul customers be visited before any backhaul customer. The basic...

This paper addresses the determinants of three types of railroad related fatalities: trespasser fatalities, those at grade crossings, and those involving passengers and employees. Of particular interest are the effects of railroad deregulation (the Staggers Act) on railroad related fatalities....

In this paper we present a dual supply model taking into account that in many industries the replenishment cycle does not only involve the physical distribution of goods, but also the manufacturing of products. Further, we suggest postponing the transportation mode decision until the products...

This paper addresses the trailer routing problem at a maritime container terminal, where yard trailers are normally assigned to specific quay cranes until the work is finished. A more efficient trailer assignment method called "dynamic routing" is proposed. A heuristic was developed and a wide...