Sessions thématiques

Maritime transportation is the backbone of international trade since more than 80% of global trade is carried by sea (UNCTAD, 2016). This fact makes from maritime transportation a crucial link in global supply chains in which the production region and the consumption region are rarely the same especially for manufactured products. Maritime transportation has captured a lot of interest by scholars in the last few years because of many reasons such as the increase in the globalization of the international economy, the global economic crisis that started in 2008, and the climate change. More particularly, the economic crisis has triggered many changes in the strategies used by maritime companies in general and by liner shipping companies in particular. These changes have led scholars to investigate how the companies can adapt to these changes by proposing optimization models and economic approaches that integrate some of these changes such as the slow steaming strategies and the alliances. Moreover, with the climate change two particular aspects have been of interest recently: the Northern Sea Route that can be used as an alternative to Canal Suez route between Asia and Europe during some periods of the year and the environmental performance of maritime transportation.

These facts request more investigation by both academia and industry in order to make the best of maritime supply chains. This session contributors will provide papers discussing optimization or economic models for maritime transportation and maritime supply chains. Examples of the papers include network design models for liner shipping, sailing speed optimization, cargo routing, empty container repositioning, berth allocation, transshipment, environmental performance, etc. This session will also accept papers on the integration of maritime transportation with other modes of transportation (intermodal transportation) or within the supply chain. Finally, the session will also call for papers proposing new research directions in maritime transportation.

REFERENCES
UNCTAD (2016). 'Review of Maritime Transportation 2012'. Paper presented at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, New York and Geneva. [online] http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/rmt2016_en.pdf (Accessed 18 February 2017).

Over the last fifteen years, a major movement in the integration of business partners to implement advanced and collaborative replenishment processes has emerged. Supply Chain Management (SCM) has thus emerged in the service and production sectors in order to identify and avail of new sources of improvement in the competitiveness of companies. SCM thus proposes management methods to reduce costs, the source of which is mainly due to poor operations coordination. This special session focuses on the management of value creation networks in the fields of service and production. More specifically, this session proposes (1) to study systems of collaborative and non-collaborative planning of service and production, in order to disclose their potential benefits to the competitiveness of enterprises, and (2), To study the impacts of such approaches on the standardization of interactions and interoperability of advanced operational planning systems, as well as the impacts of these approaches on the modeling of local operations planning problems.

Although logistical systems are everywhere and are essential to modern societies, they are lots of inefficiencies from the economic, environmental and societal points of view. The development of sustainable supply chains will be one of the major challenge of the 21st century.This session is an opportunity to present papers dealing with new challenges, trends and solutions to improve logistic resources mutualisation, in or out of a Physical Internet. New ideas and paradigms, sometimes borrowed or inspired by other fields, may help to improve actual logistic models. To name a few :
• Physical Internet concept (layered models),
• smart and modular containers (Modulushka),
• efficient use of rare mobile resources (reefers).

The growing influence on the global supply chain by the container shipping industry is a serious matter of concern. The world shipping fleet is mainly comprised of oil tanker bulk carrier general cargo ships, container ships, gas carrier, chemical tanker, offshore, ferry and passenger ships. The percentage share of container shipping shows a sharp growth in the global supply chain. According to Maritime Review 2016 from 1980 to 2016 the container share in the world fleet by ship type has increased from 1.6 % to 13.5 %. Multimodal transport refers to the transportation of goods under a single contract, but performed with at least two different means of transport. The containerization paved the way for effective and efficient of multimodal transport mainly due to the elimination of double handling of cargo. Therefore, containerization and Multimodalism go hand in hand. This phenomenon made a serious impact on global supply chain. Containerization reduces transport costs drastically as reduced handing and waiting times. It reduces congestion in ports and significantly shortened shipping time. It also reduces losses from damage and theft but it created issues in handling dangerous or hazardous cargo and impede customs and border management activities. Therefore, it is imperative that more emphasis to be drawn to address the matters pertaining to container supply chain.

Container shipping has a fundamental difference compared with other shipping types. Ship space (slots) and containers are complimentary to each other without which the “Container shipping service” cannot be rendered to its customers unless both components are available simultaneously at a given location. This is a unique feature in container shipping and it makes huge disadvantage to carriers managing their container supply chain unlike in other ship types. The container is an additional cost to carriers and there are 5 key components in the total cost namely, Capital (32%); Repair and refurbishment (25%); Imbalance (22%); Clearing and maintenance (11%); Insurance (10%) (Alderton, 2004). Accordingly, research and development in each area would be highly beneficial to the industry.

It should be noted that there are various support functions involved in container supply chain. The delays or other operational problems could seriously affect the performance of the container supply chain. Accordingly, it is suggested that more research and development is required to optimize the container supply chain. This will have a direct impact of multimodal transport and vice versa. This needs commitment and consistent engagement by both academia and industry to derive best contribution to container supply chain. This session contributors will provide papers discussing operational and economic models that help optimization of container transportation, logistics and total supply chain performances. The type of papers may include Multimodal transport, combine transport models, container interchange models, container management strategies, container allocation strategies, port rotation optimization models, multimodal solutions, optimization models to combine land and sea transport, harmonizing the customs and border management for faster container connectivity, capacity building in container shipping, port development agenda for container terminals, review of container ship sizes for total utilization. This session will focus primarily on optimization of container shipping supply chain through multimodal operation.

References:
Alderton, P. M. (2004). Reeds Sea Transport Operation and Economics (Fifth ed.). London: Adlard Coles Nautical. UNCTAD. (2016). Review of Maritime Transport. New York and Geneva: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Sustainable supply chains (SSC) should take into account, besides the economical dimension, the ecological and the societal matters (Lehmacher, 2013). In this case Supply chain manager therefore need to take into account the economical, ecological, and societal issues into its performance evaluation models.

In the same time, to be competitive, supply chain should present innovative advantages. In that way, firms try to innovate by developing new ways of business. Such innovative activities usually imply an increase of the risk level. Depending on the partners and on the different resources shared in SSC (financial, technological, physical, managerial) various kind of risks are possible. So Supply chain manager needs to take initiatives to reduce risks.

In the context of a Sustainable Supply Chain, the purpose of the session is to discuss research works that:

- Propose new ways to do business (new business model, new technologies, industry 4.0 developments, …),
- Manage tradeoff between risks and innovation,
- Propose evaluation model to manage risks and innovativeness in SSC.

The general issue of supply chain management is to coordinate material release and resource utilization decisions across independent organizations characterized by disjoint planning domains and information asymmetry. In this context, poor coordination of production and distribution decisions caused by lacking of decisional, organizational and informational integration leads to inefficiencies such as the bullwhip effect (Lee et al. 1997), which result in missed opportunities, delays, inefficient inventory decisions, poor capacity allocation and misuse of resources, all leading to increased cost. Therefore, in order to improve supply chain performance academics from several disciplines have proposed a several number of coordination methods. The objective of this special session is to gather the new academic proposed approaches to coordinate the actors of supply chain considering the reality of the supply chain.

The hospital system must solve problems of organization, planning and dimensioning by using techniques of process modelling, simulation and optimization. This session aims to share the different works of the researchers in this axis, especially researchs dealing with patient/caregivers relationships all along the route of care of the patient to the hospital - the management of the staff - the circuits of routing of linen, food, fluids, drug delivery needed for the diagnosis and treatment in the bed of the patient and that do not have to cross the collection of waste - the management and coordination of the medical platforms of the hospital. Indeed these problems make hospital system very exigent because it requires compliance with quality standards to ensure that the consumers of healthcare are receiving consistent levels of safe, quality care and includes constant monitoring of performance and safety of patient records. The use of optimization and simulation offer a potential to identify improvements and new understandings in how a new facility operates and according to the treated problem, optimization and simulation make it possible to generate solutions offering non-stop services for any patient and improve the service in real-world situations.

Container terminals (CT) represent the cornerstone of the global supply-chain. The management of these maritime platforms and the optimization of containers handling processes are still challenging problems. These processes are subject to different risks that would affect the proper functioning of CT. This is often due to the internal facts, such as the occurrence of accidents during containers handling, or external facts, such as containers misuse for illicit traffic. The integration of risk management process and the optimization of CT processes represent conflicting goals that should be reconciled.

CTORM aims to disseminate recent theoretical and methodological developments, significant technical applications, case studies and survey results in modeling, simulation, optimization and artificial intelligence. This session is intended to discuss seaport logistics problems. Thereby, original research papers related to the container stacking, berth allocation, containers stowage, containers traceability, risk management in CT and their variants/extensions using innovative technics are welcomed. A special attention will be given to planning, scheduling maritime operations and new technics using robust optimization both in academic research and industry.

Big data offers the opportunity to change business model design and day-to-day decision making. The growing combination of resources, tools, and applications has deep implications in the field of supply chain management, presenting a multitude of opportunities and a challenge to this field. Indeed, more data have been recorded in the past ten years than in all the previous human history. Big data are being used to transform medical practices, modernize public policies, and permit business decision making. Big data have the potential to revolutionize supply chain dynamics. The growth in the quantity and diversity of data has led to data sets larger than is manageable by the conventional, hands-on management tools. To manage these new and potentially invaluable data sets, new methods of data science and new applications in the form of predictive analytics, have been developed.
This session suggests exchanges on various vital issues such as potential applications of big data within logistics and Supply chain management practice, and research based upon management areas within logistics and Supply chain management with reference to various sources of big data ( Sales data, Consumer Data, Location and Time Data, etc...).

Transportation is the backbone of virtually all supply chains. Therefore, the scientific community and the industry is devoting substantial efforts to design, plan and operate freight transportation systems so as to improve the customer service level while being cost effective and reliable. In recent years, sustainable development has become a major issue for customers, companies and governments. Transportation is responsible of many adverse impacts on the environment and on public health such as pollution (carbon emissions, particulate matters, NOx, SOx, black carbon), noise, accidents and congestion. The concepts of sustainable and smart freight transportation have emerged to maintain performance efficiency while mitigating the adverse impacts of transportation. In this thematic session, we are looking for contributions related to sustainable and smart freight transportation at the strategic, tactical and operational levels. The contributions can focus on (but are not limited to):
• Design of sustainable transportation networks (potentially including intermodal transportation); • Transportation mode selection for sustainable logistics; • Intermodal transportation service design for sustainability; • Policy measures in favor of smart and sustainable freight transportation; • Smart corridors, smart territories and smart logistics; • Impact of green freight programs implementation; • Vehicle routing problems with sustainability aspects; • Inventory routing problems with sustainability aspects; • Planning of intermodal and synchro-modal transportation; • Environmental risk management for transportation systems; • Impact of new information technologies for sustainable freight transportation.

Carter et al. (2015) argue that a supply chain only exists to the extent that it is visible: we can only see as far as our known horizon. The visibility of other agents in the supply chain by the focal firm becomes attenuated as the physical or cultural ‘distance’ increases or the number of nodes increases. As a result supply chain boundaries become less clear or fuzzy as the focal agent peers towards the horizon. Digitalization and new technology have the potential to radically improve visibility in the supply chain. Information is now available about the previously unknown supplier’s supplier. The integration of the supply chain, previously in doubt (Fabbe-Costes and Jahre, 2008), is perhaps being made more possible by new technology. Blockchain technology allows the sharing of information about products and services across all supply chain partners in real time; smart devices allow the customer to track products and access services; the automation of processes is revolutionizing warehouse logistics; more sustainable supply chains are possible as applications optimize transport flows and the movement of goods; big data can provide supply chain partners with greater data accuracy, clarity, and insights; predictive market and data analytics facilitate suppliers analysis and improve procurement performance… Whole new business ecosystems are emerging linked to the digitalization of supply chains. These changes are creating both challenges and opportunities for all actors in the supply chain. This session welcomes all contributions from researchers that shed light on the impact of digitalization on supply chains, using either quantitative or qualitative methodologies. Carter, C.R., Rogers, D.S. and Choi, T.Y. (2015). Toward the Theory of the Supply Chain. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 51(2), 89-97. Available from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jscm.12073/abstract Fabbe-Costes, N. and Jahre, M. (2008), “Supply chain integration and performance: a review of the evidence”, The International Journal of Logistics Management, Vol. 19, No.2, pp.130–154.

Computational intelligence has a long history of applications to transport management and logistics and plays an important role in establishing the interdisciplinary pool of methodologies employed in transport and logistics science research. For example, dynamic programming, evolutionary algorithms, multi-agent systems, artificial neural networks and fuzzy logic have been used in operations management (e.g. delivery, supply), scheduling, production planning and control, demand forecasting and risk estimate, among others. The use of computational intelligence in transport and logistics science research allows heightened understanding of the dynamics of complex systems. Agent-based modeling, using agents whose intelligence includes full-blown creativity thanks to their ability to learn and to adapt, is revealing information about such systems that has never before been supported. The purpose of this special session is to bring together the researchers from computational intelligence community as well as transport and logistics sciences to set up visions on how state-of-art computational intelligence techniques can be and are used for solving transport and logistics scheduling problems, and how transport and logistics scientists can contribute in promoting new applications with computational intelligence.

The current economic and environmental challenges require different types of business pressures. Indeed, they should improve their production capacity, providing quality products and have competitive prices, and while meeting consumer expectations in regard to respect for the environment. For each production system, it is then necessary to adopt a responsible production taking account of environmental protection as well as social responsibility criteria with respect to the company's employees and its stakeholders, for the overall operation of the company and all its products and services. In response, the organization must operate changes and propose new ways of producing, as well as new products and services more environmentally friendly. The approach is a critical issue for current companies, which enroll sustainable development at the heart of their strategies.
From design to marketing, a product goes through four main stages: design, development, manufacturing and marketing. This can have environmental impacts, insofar as any product design generally requires, Raw Material extraction (RM), use of energy, the use of consumables for maintenance or appropriate treatment at the end of life. With the current economic and regulatory constraints, responsible industrialists who are preparing for the future are led to manufacture ecological products, environmentally conscious, and carried out in good hygienic and safety conditions. At each stage, the concern is to fight against CO2 emissions and the production of waste, as well as to account for and optimize consumption of water, RM and especially energy as an ingredient of their manufacturing processes, in order to improve their profitability. Energy management is crucial to the sustainability of modern economic systems. Renewable energies have become a priority and have rapidly consolidated their share in the energy supply of several countries and regions. The interest in developing these green energies stems from a desire to reduce the dependence of fossil energy resources and contribute to the fight against climate change. So how immobilize these preventive measures to enable sustainable management of production shop floor addressing current ecological challenges?
With a tendency to adopt a green approach in production shop floor, the objective of the session is to:
• Identify new value-creating lines for products. • Discuss the procedures and skills necessary to the design and optimized management of production systems, with respect to current environmental challenges. • Promote modes of sustainable production and consumption, to improve finished products and services while reducing impacts on the environment and health, especially in terms of CO2 emissions. • Present robust tools to improve the environmental performance of the product throughout its life cycle. • Discuss energy efficiency and investment opportunities in the renewable energy sector, aiming to accompany their development and increase their share in the total electricity capacity of the countries. • Offer new economic mechanisms and approaches for innovative design that combines ecology and economy.

For a couple of years, the new technologies have led to a revolution (lower costs, improved efficiency,...) in the logistics and manufacturing industries:
- Ground mobile robots (UGV) with arm and gripper for picking. - Aerial mobile robots (UAV) for inventories. - Collaborative robotics arms or humanoid robots for de/palettisation tasks. - Decision support and monitoring systems for better management of goods and resources. - SCADA and Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) softwares. ...
The aim of this invited session is to discuss the new trends, review industrial needs and present innovative solutions about automation in the logistics warehouses. The session includes the following topics, but not restricted to:
- Indoor localisation challenges. - Use of aerial mobile robots (UAV) or ground mobile robots (UGV) or AGV (path planning, autonomous navigation, control...). - Autonomous mobile manipulators. - Object manipulation in industrial and manufacturing environments. - Modelling and simulation. - Advanced control. - Fault Detection and Isolation (FDI). - Decision support systems. - Optimization and scheduling. - Resource allocation problems. - Innovative technologies (sensors, mechatronics devices (grippers,...),...). - Wireless communications. - Artificial intelligence. - Energy management.

Transport is responsible for the increase in greenhouse gases emissions. Current environmental pressures on the need of reducing energy consumption and cut greenhouse gas emissions affect transport activity. To meet these pressures, Electric Vehicle are an efficient and sustainable solution. However, the incorporation of Electric Vehicles transportation activities raise some issues about the number, location, and capacity of recharge stations and batteries. One of the most important activities is related to the Electric Vehicle Routing Problem. This session will focus on novel research dealing with electric vehicle routing and ecosystem. This session covers many open research challenges about battery size and charging, infrastructure location and allocation, electric energy source, environmental-related issues, strategic planning and operational issues.

Parallel computing is becoming increasingly important for solving the logistics transportation problems. Indeed, realistic logistics transportation problems require solving large scale combinatorial optimization problems due to the highly complexity and uncertain environments. In addition, a number of real-time logistics applications require the computation of solutions in short computing times. Parallel computing and/or Hight Performance Computing are used to achieve near optimal solutions in a reasonnable computing time, as the parallelization conterbalances the increased size and complexity of the problem. Papers that describe research, development, and application of transportation models that utilize new approaches in parallel and distributed computing like GPU, grid computing, peer to peer computing will be considered. Topic include (but not limited to) • Parallel models (island, master-worker, multi-start, etc.) for metaheuristics • Parallel implementations of VRP, Hub Location/Allocation Problems, Planning, Logistics,Manufacturing etc • Implementation of parallel metaheuristics for logistics transportation on GPU, Grids Computing etc. • Parallel computation and Big Data in logistics transportation • Computational/theoretical studies of logistics transportation problems using parallel computing.

La crise économique, les alliances des armateurs, les fusions et regroupements (ports, armateurs) dans un contexte de concurrence croissante, la numérisation des échanges, la virtualisation des flux d’information, la transformation de flux massifiés en flux locaux, l’enjeu d’à la fois faciliter et sécuriser le passage portuaire, le développement de nouvelles technologies et l’émergence des smart ports, la performance environnementale et l’intégration de l’hinterland au sein de corridors logistiques sont autant de défis qui conduisent les acteurs du milieu maritime et portuaire à reconfigurer leur relation au territoire et à tisser des liens nouveaux pour innover. Cette session vise à promouvoir des travaux en français et en anglais qui traitent de ces enjeux. Les communications pourront porter par exemple sur : • Les transformations en cours dans le domaine maritime et portuaire au sens large et leurs implications en termes de management et d’innovation, • Le développement des corridors logistiques et leur impact, • La construction des écosystèmes d’affaires maritimes et portuaires, • La gouvernance des ports et des ensembles portuaires, • Les stratégies d’acteurs et les alliances, • Les relations public/ privé • Les enjeux environnementaux et leur impact sur le management logistique, • Les nouvelles technologies et leur impact sur la chaîne logistique, • Des études de cas, des comparaisons internationales sont bienvenues, • La gestion des opérations et des flux. Les meilleures communications à cette session pourront donner lieu à publication dans le numéro spécial de Logistique & Management dédié à la logistique maritime et portuaire.

La logistique urbaine a connu de nombreux changements ces dernières années. De nombreuses expérimentations permettent aujourd'hui de retours sur expérience qui montre un vrai besoin d'innovation dans le domaine de la logistique urbaine mais aussi un vrai problème en termes d'évaluation et d'efficacité de ces expérimentations. Cette cession s'intéresse également aux nouvelles dynamiques d'innovation aussi bien au niveau managérial que stratégique, ayant un impact sur l'organisation logistique sur un territoire vue comme un ensemble complexe de sous-systèmes qui doivent être coordonnés (corridor, flux de personnes, réseaux d'entreprises, institutions publiques etc.). Les thématiques qui nous intéressent dans cette cession seront les suivantes : • Les modèles théoriques et l’innovation en logistique urbaine • Les écosystèmes logistiques • Les Best practices et leurs limites en logistique urbaine • L'évaluation des innovations en logistique urbaine • Etudes de cas saillantes ou comparatives • La mutualisation (CDU, ELU…) • Gouvernance en logistique urbaine avec de multiples parties prenantes • Les connexions entre les différents systèmes territoriaux (par exemple, entre le corridor et la ville, entre villes et intercommunalité…) • L'intégration de l’habitant/consommateur final dans la gouvernance

Performance measurement of the Logistics system is used to evaluate the efficiency of the supply chain management in order to improve the quality of the business processes. Performance measures are classified in several ways in the literature; soft and hard measures, financial and non-financial measures or quantitative and qualitative measures. In this session, researchers are invited to discuss and exchange their ideas relating to the performance measures of the logistics system and how that influences the global yield of the industrial business.