Mapping of the Brazilian Scientific Publication on Facility Location

Abstract

Mathematical models are relevant to indicate the optimal location of facilities and, consequently, help in the search for efficiency in the supply chain. Although facility location problems are consolidated in the Operational Research field, few publications are dedicated to investigate the profile of the academic production (the amount of paper published), aiming to direct new studies on the subject and propose models that solve the current challenges. Thus, this paper aims to present a scientometric analysis of the articles on facility location published in the Web of Science, in order to verify the profile of Brazilian scientific production. As result, approximately 2% of the papers have researchers affiliated to Brazilian institutions. The interest for the subject is recent, with emphasis on universities. Brazil maintains an intense international collaboration network, cooperating with 45 different countries, especially USA. Finally, there is opportunity for publications that include the environmental dimention to mathematical models and for expansion in company-university-government collaboration.

Strategic planning of freight transportation to support smart cities design: The Brazilian soybean case

“…As a suggestion for further studies, it is recommended to adopt sustainable mathematical models of location or, at least, the ones that consider the environmental dimension, given the difficulty in measuring the social dimension and the scarcity of literature presented in [8] and [34]. Besides, others cargos could be considered and new scenarios must be proposed.…”

“…Therefore, for future studies, we indicate the application of the model proposed in [8] which considers logistics (including, here, the initial investments to open a facility when applicable) and emission costs in the decision of locating a facility dedicated to modal integration. Regarding the social aspects, it is harder to evaluate -as discussed in [34] due to the lack of consensus on how to measure social impacts. Nevertheless, we believe that by using LICs and reducing traffic and road flows, we are collaborating to reduce social impacts such as accidents, time spent in traffic, expenditures with health system related to transportation issues and injuries from accidents.…”

“…State-of-the-art papers dealing with the main mathematical models and solution techniques can be found at: [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. We also found facility location surveys focused on specific areas such as healthcare facilities [32], perishable agri-food chains [33]; and one dedicated to mapping the Brazilian context [34]. However, there is a scarcity of cases applying the models in the smart cities design or in the planning of smart territories.…”

Renewable energy in sustainable supply chain: A review

“…Through a data mining process, the articles were obtained from the WoS database. The database was chosen due to its satisfactory scope and coverage [57], and for being used in papers with similar methodology as [58], [33]. Table 1 shows the parameters of the search.…”

“…Besides, it is possible to identify the keywords most recurrent in the studies. As presented in Figure 9, the most frequent keywords are biomass (61), bioenergy (58), biofuel (53), energy (41), renewable energy (41), palm oil (28), bioethanol (19), and others. Also, Figure 10 presents the top 20 keywords and their matching networks with each other, noting that in the middle between all the words, the terms are always seen, sustainability, supply chain, life cycle assessment, biofuel, bioenergy, biomass, optimization, and renewable energy.…”