This paper introduces a bi-objective winner determination problem which arises in the procurement of transportation contracts via combinatorial auctions where bundle bidding is possible. The problem is modelled as a bi-objective extension to the set covering problem. We consider both the minimisation of the total procurement costs and the maximisation of the service-quality level at which the transportation contracts are executed. Taking into account the size of real-world transport auctions, a solution method has to cope with problems of up to some hundred contracts and a few thousand bundle bids. To solve the problem, we propose a bi-objective branch-andbound algorithm and eight variants of a multiobjective genetic algorithm. Artificial benchmark instances that comply with important economic features of the transport domain are introduced to evaluate the methods. The branch-and-bound approach is able to find the optimal trade-off solutions in reasonable time for very small instances only. The eight variants of the genetic algorithm are compared among each other by means of large instances. The best variant is also evaluated using the small instances with known optimal solutions. The results indicate that the performance largely depends on the initialisation heuristic and suggest also that a well-balanced combination of genetic operators is crucial to obtain good solutions.
Additive manufacturing (AM), or popular scientific 3D printing, disseminates in more and more production processes. This changes not only production processes themselves, e.g. by replacing subtractive production technologies, but AM will in all likelihood also impact the configuration of supply networks. Due to a more efficient use of raw materials, transportation relations may change and production sites may be relocated. How this change will look like is part of an ongoing discussion in industry and academia. However, quantitative studies on this question are scarce. In order to quantify the potential impact of AM on a two-stage supply network, we use a facility location model. The impact of AM on the production process is integrated into the model by varying resource efficiency ratios. We create a test data set of 700 instances. Features of this data set are, among others, different geographical clusters of source nodes, production nodes, and customer nodes. By means of a computational study, the impact of AM on the supply network structure is measured by four indicators. In the context of our experimental setup , AM reduces the overall transportation costs of a supply network compared to subtractive production. However, the share of the transportation costs on the second stage of a supply network in the total costs increases significantly. Therefore, supply networks in which production sites and customer sites are closely spaced improve their cost-effectiveness stronger than other regional configurations of supply networks. Keywords Supply network Á Additive manufacturing Á 3D printing Á Quantitative assessment Á Two-stage capacitated facility location problem This article is part of a focus collection on ''Dynamics in Logistics: Digital Technologies and Related Management Methods''.
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