PhD Qualifying Examination


"Optimization in Transportation Procurement"

Mr. Wenbin Zhu


Abstract:

Logistics is a big industry, with estimated expenditures in 2001 in the US
at $713 billion, and accounts for 8% of US gross domestic product. It is
common to see annual expenditure of $75 million for big shippers
(manufacturers, distributors, retailers who need the transportation
service to ship goods for them). A reduction of transportation service
price (even in a small percentage) will have great impact to the total
cost for big shippers.

Many researches have been attracted to study the process of transportation
procurement to design auction mechanics to reduce the cost for shippers.
In particular the employment of combinatorial auction in transportation
procurement facilitates information sharing between shippers and helps
transportation service providers lower their operation cost and propagate
part of the benefits to the shippers.

Despite the advances in transportation procurement research, there
are still many practical issues yet to be solved. For example, to
incorporate uncertainty into what-if analysis, to take non-cost factors
into account, to consider operational and management concerns, to address
data mismatching problems. And to improve the usability by providing
intuitive tools to allow participants to express their constraints and
concerns, tools to simplify the analysis.


Date:     		Wednesday, 20 December 2006

Time:                   2:30p.m.-4:30p.m.

Venue:                  Room 1504
			lifts 25-26

Committee Members:      Dr. Siu-Wing Cheng (Supervisor)
			Dr. Andrew Lim (Supervisor, IELM)
			Dr. Huamin Qu (Chairperson)
			Dr. Shing-Chi Cheung
			Dr. James Kwok


**** ALL are Welcome ****