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Food Waste or Not – That is not the only Question
A lot of food is wasted and this is often measured in binary terms (true/false). But why and is there a better option?
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Food for Though: Considering Food Quality in Routing Procedures
Traditionally, vehicle routing optimization procedures focus on reducing cost by either minimizing distance or duration traveled. For perishable food products, however, one additionally may want to consider quality impacts in related routing and scheduling operations.
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Allow Me to Break the Ice – A Brief Introduction to Food Cold Chain Management
Cold chain management is gaining plenty of attention in recent months due to the specific storage and handling requirements of the COVID19-vaccines. Similarly, food cold chain management is a highly interesting field with multiple possibilities to improve operations.
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Using GraphHopper within Simulations
The simulation software AnyLogic uses GraphHopper to calculate and visualize shortest paths on real-world transport networks during a single simulation run. I have used this feature in multiple research projects (e.g. on disaster relief and sudden rail closures) to combine vehicle routing and simulation approaches in real-world settings. If you are starting to work with…
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Simulation Optimization and the Trade-Off between Optimizing and Evaluating
Combining simulation with optimization procedures enables one to investigate complex real-world problems under varying settings and scenarios. Implementation, however, is challenging as trade-offs between time spent optimizing and estimating the quality of a solution has to be considered.
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In-class Assignment to Teach Vehicle Routing Problems in Business Schools
During a research stay in Barcelona, I came across an interesting talk (Ramalhinho and Grasas, 2013) on teaching vehicle routing problems (VRPs) in graduate business school. The main idea is quite simple: let the students solve a small VRP manually. They can use any electronic sources of their choice (e.g., GoogleMaps, BingMaps, ArcMap). Afterwards, problems…
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Simulation Optimization with AnyLogic
Over the last years, I have worked on various research projects requiring the combination of simulation and optimization methods. It is a powerful tool to investigate complex setting with different input and influencing factors. I mostly use the simulation software package AnyLogic to accomplish this, which allows one to add optimization procedures coded in Java. This…
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