Modern ports face significant challenges as strategic nodes of global supply chains, being responsible for the coordination of inbound and outbound flows at deep-sea and in hinterland transport corridors. Digitization and the adoption of disruptive technologies can help ports to tide over operational challenges. Automated Ground Vehicles (AGVs) are an integral part of operations at many modern ports, especially inside container terminals. With the shift to automated transport outside of the terminal areas, these AGVs may form platoons to establish an efficient port hinterland transport corridor. In this work, we propose a new robust optimization approach to assess the time and cost-efficiency of applying such AGV platoons in a container pickup and delivery problem. We develop a bi-objective mixed-integer programming model, which simultaneously minimizes time and cost elements, and also considers emissions. Each transportation task can be carried out by AGVs or conventional trucks, while the number of available vehicles for each mode is uncertain (as they are used to connect different modalities of container transport). The robust optimization model is based on an ellipsoidal uncertainty set to handle this uncertainty and an augmented epsilon constraint method to obtain Pareto-optimal solutions for this multi-objective problem. The developed framework is evaluated in two case studies: the Port of Rotterdam in The Netherlands and the Port of Valparaíso in Chile, with different traveling distances in corridors to a dry port (200 km) and a pre-terminal (11 km), respectively. The results indicate that the new direct delivery scheme by AGV platoons is significantly more cost- and time-efficient than the benchmark and provides a low-carbon emission transportation mode. While the benefits of decreased dwell times (56% on average) and carbon emissions (on average by 10%) are similar for short and long traveling distances, the savings in cost increase (from 4.9% to 8%) with the increased distance in the Rotterdam case.

Port-related emissions are a growing problem for urban areas often located directly next to maritime container terminals highly frequented by container trucks. Empty truck trips, caused by a lack of coordination among truckers, are responsible for a significant share of these emissions, and collaboration among truckers is seen as the major opportunity to address this issue. Truck appointment systems (TASs) schedule truck activities and enable collaboration for transportation between terminals and client locations. The aim of this work is to introduce a collaborative planning model to be operated within a TAS and to investigate its impact on emission and cost objectives. Starting with a review of requirements for a TAS with collaboration, an optimization model based on the multiple traveling salesman problem with time windows is developed, leveraging collaboration to reduce costs and emissions. The results for a real-world case demonstrate that the developed approach provides appropriately coordinated truck schedules and effectively reduces truck emissions and costs.

Empirical research has shown that airside ground operations imply a significant percentage of overall airport-related emissions. Among those operations, taxiing is one of the most emission-intensive processes, directly related to the initial pushback process that has a significant impact on the taxiing duration of departing flights. Possible approaches for an effective management of pushbacks at an airport are simulation and optimization models. Airside operations at major airports involve a complex interplay of many operations and parties and therefore need to be planned in a coordinated fashion. Yet, existing approaches have not been applied in a comprehensive planning environment for airside operations. In this work, we develop an algorithm-based relocation approach for pushback vehicles that enables an effective minimization of delays and emissions during the taxiing process. As a result alternative sequences of departing flights are evaluated against each other to find the ones with least total emissions and delay. These algorithms are applied in a simulation environment and evaluated against real-world cases. Preliminary results demonstrate that we are able to solve the underlying pushback routing problem in appropriate computational times for dynamic decision support needed at airports.

Recent developments in the manufacturing industry are linked to the systematical adoption and deployment of cyber-physical systems (CPS) that monitor and synchronize information between the physical factory floor and the cyber-computational space providing advanced information analytics. While it is widely recognized in literature that the related trend of transforming the manufacturing industry, the so-called industry 4.0, leads to distinct interventions in operations of businesses and public organizations, appropriate governance practices still need to be established. This paper uses a detailed overview on changes going along with the emergence of CPS and industry 4.0 to point out requirements for IT governance approaches supporting the adoption of CPS. The observations are illustrated for an example using the COBIT 5 governance of IT framework.

Open data (OD) use and the opening of data have become major strategic objectives in different communities. Nevertheless, the potential of OD is still not leveraged in many areas. In this work, we focus the OD impact information systems research. We review the respective literature for different domains of OD research and analyze cases of data-intensive decision support systems in transportation as well as open research grid systems. The resulting changes, challenges, and opportunities that OD causes are categorized according to different OD activities in IS research. Hence, they may serve as an agenda to foster OD practices, platforms, and administration in the area.

Information Technology (IT) nowadays is integral part in most organizations and business models, putting Enterprise Governance of IT (EGIT) in focus of researchers and practitioners. A common approach for the implementation of EGIT in organizations is the use of best-practice frameworks, of which COBIT 5 is a very well-known example. However, recent studies show that COBIT 5, with its 37 EGIT processes, is often perceived as complex and organizations do not know where to start. To contribute to this concern, this papers reports on a Delphi study that was conducted to capture data on the perceived ease and effectiveness of specific COBIT 5 processes. Our results as such identify (perceived) effective and easy processes as a starting point for IT governance implementations. Experts view processes in the more strategic and governance area typical as more effective but less easy to implement. The more operational processes are typically experienced as easier to implement but also less effective. The result also reports that, according to experts, the most important process to start an EGIT implementation is the process around managing the IT related strategy.

Port-related emissions are a growing problem for urban areas often located directly next to ports highly frequented by trucks and vessels. Empty truck trips are responsible for a significant share of these emissions. Truck appointment systems (TASs) allow scheduling of truck arrivals and enable collaboration among truckers. Though, TASs leveraging the potential to reduce avoidable emissions due to empty trips have hardly been studied. We aim to show how a TAS following this idea may be designed and evaluate the approach. We thus review requirements for a collaborative TAS and develop a discrete-event simulation model to assess coordinated truck appointments in a practical case of drayage. The results indicate that the approach effectively reduces port-related truck emissions, but might create congestion in the port. The considered case refers to drayage processes, but may also be transferred to the hinterland. The developed simulation model assumes a generic truck appointment process and may also serve to analyze diverse cases.

Rapid growth rates seem to indicate that recently introduced free-floating car sharing (FFCS) can mean a breakthrough for the car sharing idea. Like other vehicle sharing systems, FFCS systems face significant regional demand fluctuations. Thus, providers might have to reposition empty vehicles to not lose potential customers. However, this aspect has been hardly examined in research and practice. This study aims to investigate appropriate relocation strategies for this new type of car sharing systems regarding the case of car2go. For this purpose a survey based evaluation was conducted, new relocation strategies were developed, and a discrete-event simulation model for the evaluation with real time data from car2go was drafted. The results indicate that availability of cars is crucial for customer acceptance, but customers are open for smart relocation strategies. Furthermore, the developed simulation approach provides the basis for an in-depth analysis of various strategies with different objectives using a realistic demand forecast.

In contrast to classical business, e-business highly depends on internet technologies. Business and IT naturally coalesce here. Thus, a customer-driven IT requirement may enforce an adjustment of a business model. This poses new challenges for researchers and practitioners as currently a business-driven alignment paradigm dominates in IT governance. We identify characteristics of e-business and examine how IT governance frameworks can integrate these characteristics under consideration of a bi-directional business/IT alignment process. We use COBIT 5 as a benchmark for our examination, and reveal a need for a modification of the framework to fully cover e-business requirements. Based on the COBIT 5 Goal Cascade, we propose a possible integration of a bottom-up requirements process. Our findings for e-business can build a basis for future research on different business models.

COBIT 5 is positioned in the market as a de-facto standard for enterprise governance of IT. Relevant literature and management experience, however, indicate that the adoption of the framework is challenging due to its perceived complexity. In this paper we present a software prototype aiming to promote the understanding of COBIT 5, its components and their relationships by means of information visualization, thus facilitating its usage and adoption in scientific and practical context. The current state of evaluating the prototype is outlined.

The rising number of loading devices called swap bodies in road transport has created new opportunities for carriers and novel challenges for researchers in vehicle routing synchronization. Nevertheless, there are few vehicle routing models in literature that integrate swap bodies for combined road transport and there is no known best practice in the industry to handle these opportunities. In this paper we aim to examine to which extent Information Systems and Operations Research can help to provide solutions for this new planning problem and evaluate the potential of vehicle routing under consideration of swap bodies regarding a real world case of a major carrier. We develop a routing heuristic and prototype software to support routing considering loading options with swap bodies. The software is tested with real world data from the cooperating industry partner. We observe significant reductions in costs, total driven kilometers and operating times. Thus, we demonstrate the importance to integrate swap bodies in vehicle routing models for road transport. Furthermore, the developed software can be a basis for future work on exact planning models.

Late Acceptance Hill Climbing (LAHC) is a recent metaheuristic in the realm of local search based procedures. The basic idea is to delay the comparison between neighborhood solutions and to compare new candidate solutions to a solution having been current several steps ago. The LAHC was first presented at the PATAT 2008 conference and successfully tested for exam timetabling, the traveling salesman problem (TSP) and the magic square problem and the results seemed extraordinary. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the behavior of the method and to provide some extended understanding about its success and limitations. To do so, we investigate the method for a generalized version of the TSP, the traveling purchaser problem.