• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.13-34
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• 2002

This paper considers a postal transportation planning problem in the transportation network of the form of hub and spoke Given mail sorting centers and an exchange center, available vehicles and amount of mails to be transported between mail sorting centers, postal transportation planning is to make a transportation plan without violating various restrictions. The objective is to minimize the total transportation cost. To solve the problem, a tabu search algorithm is proposed. The algorithm is composed of a route construction procedure and a route improvement procedure to improve a solution obtained by the route construction procedure using a tabu search. The tabu search uses the best-admissible strategy, BA, and the first-best-admissible strategy, FBA. The algorithm was tested on problems consisting of 11, 16 and 21 mail sorting centers including one exchange center. Solutions of the problems consisting of 11 mail sorting centers including one exchange center were compared with optimal solutions On average, solutions using BA strategy were within 0.287% of the optimum and solutions using FBA strategy were within 0.508% of the optimum. Computational results show that the proposed algorithm can solve practically sized problems within a reasonable time and the quality of the solution is very good.

• Journal of Veterinary Clinics
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.278-285
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• 2016

Epidemiological studies have shown the association between transportation of live animals and the potential transmission of infectious disease between premises. This finding was also observed in the 2014-2015 foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreak in Korea. Furthermore, slaughterhouses played a key role in the global spread of the FMD virus during the epidemic. In this context, in-depth knowledge of the structure of direct and indirect contact between slaughterhouses is paramount for understanding the dynamics of FMD transmission. But the social network structure of vehicle movements to slaughterhouses in Korea remains unclear. Hence, the aim of this study was to configure a social network topology of vehicle movements between slaughterhouses for a better understanding of how they are potentially connected, and to explore whether FMD outbreaks can be explained by the network properties constructed in the study. We created five monthly directed networks based on the frequency and chronology of on- and off-slaughterhouse vehicle movements. For the monthly network, a node represented a slaughterhouse, and an edge (or link) denoted vehicle movement between two slaughterhouses. Movement data were retrieved from the national Korean Animal Health Integrated System (KAHIS) database, which tracks the routes of individual vehicle movements using a global positioning system (GPS). Electronic registration of livestock movements has been a mandatory requirement since 2013 to ensure traceability of such movements. For each of the five studied networks, the network structures were characterized by small-world properties, with a short mean distance, a high clustering coefficient, and a short diameter. In addition, a strongly connected component was observed in each of the created networks, and this giant component included 94.4% to 100% of all network nodes. The characteristic hub-and-spoke type of structure was not identified. Such a structural vulnerability in the network suggests that once an infectious disease (such as FMD) is introduced in a random slaughterhouse within the cohesive component, it can spread to every other slaughterhouse in the component. From an epidemiological perspective, for disease management, empirically derived small-world networks could inform decision-makers on the higher potential for a large FMD epidemic within the livestock industry, and could provide insights into the rapid-transmission dynamics of the disease across long distances, despite a standstill of animal movements during the epidemic, given a single incursion of infection in any slaughterhouse in the country.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.91-106
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• 2010

Recently, interest in supply chain management is rising along with the increasing oil prices and traffic congestion. In particular, people started studying the issue, but realized that advantageous strategies for suppliers and retailers are not always advantageous to a carrier. Therefore, in this study the atuhors set up a simulation scenario to understand delivery vehicle routing problems under various inventory policies, namely Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) and Periodic Order Quantity (POQ) and network configurations. First, the authors made a virtual supply chain. Then they analyzed characteristics of delivery vehicle routing under various inventory policies (EOQ and POQ) and network configurations. As a result, the POQ inventory policy decreases the number of vehicles, the number of drivers, and the service time of vehicles. Also, the centralized network increases the load factor of vehicles and decreases the service time of vehicles. In other words, the centralized network and the POQ inventory policy are better for the carrier. These results show a savings of 15,556,806 won ($13,389.10) in a month: a reduction of 17%.