Distribution Network Design And Distribution Planning For High-speed Rail Catering Food Supply Chain

With the emerging development and construction of high-speed passenger lines,railway companies are increasingly focusing on developing rail catering services.The task of providing catering services for high-speed railways(CSHRs)is thus an important component of passenger rail transport services.This research is motivated bya series of logistics planning and management problems for CSHRs that are affected and restricted by rail public planning and critical frame of time sensitive food products.The problems studied include designing a distribution system and assigning perishable products on the designed network.In Chapter 2,we applied fuzzy quality function deployment(F-QFD)to identify and evaluate potential service stations for CSHRs(SSSP-CSHRs).Fuzzy importance ratings obtained using F-QFD might be misleading because the traditional approach does not consider the random fluctuations of outputs.This paper proposes a two-phase robust F-QFD process that is integrated with a robust analysis to consider how the QFD process can interact with both fuzziness and randomness found in real-world CSHR management.Two indicators that measure absolute and relative robustness are proposed.We develop two-phase robustness-oriented fuzzy goal programming(RFGP)models to determine the locations of potential service stations.Two robustness indicators are introduced into the two-phase RFGP models to mitigate the adverse effect of random fluctuations.To address the fuzzy and binary variables in the model of phase 2,a hybrid cross-entropy method(HCEA)is developed.A case study regarding 33 potential stations along the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed corridor is used to demonstrate the applicability of the method.Then the essential strategic decision in CSHRs is to design a distribution network for the delivery of high-quality perishable food products to trains in need.In Chapter 3,we proposes a novel model for integrating location decision making with daily rail catering operations,which are affected by various aspects of rail planning,to meet time-sensitive passenger demands.A three-echelon location routing problem with time windows and time deadline constraints(3E-LRPTWTDC)is proposed to formulate this integrated distribution network design problem.This model attempts to determine the capacities and locations of distribution centers and to optimize the number of meals delivered to stations.The model attempts to generate a schedule for refrigerated cars traveling from distribution centers to rail stations for train loading whereby meals can be catered to trains within tight time windows and sold before a specified time deadline.By relaxing the time-window constraints,a relaxation model that can be solved using an off-the-shelf mixed integer programming solver is obtained to provide a lower bound of 3E-LRPTWTDC.An HCEA is proposed to solve the 3E-LRPTWTDC.A case study on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed corridor and a large-scale case study on the Chinese railway network are addressed in a comprehensive study to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed models and algorithm.Distribution planning problem for CSHRs(DPP-CSHRs)aims to optimize the food flow pattern in a given distribution network.In China,food products for CSHR are currently divided into two classes:(1)ambient meals and(2)"cold chain" meals.In Chapter 4,we attempts to optimize the flow patterns in a cold chain food supply chain network for CSHRs.The proposed variational inequality model describes the uncertain demand using Newsvendor model and imposes time-deadlines on the paths considering flow-dependent lead time.The time-deadline constraints are formulated as generalized side constraints using Dirac delta function so that they can be priced using Lagrangian dualization.An Euler algorithm combined with Augmented Lagrangian Dual algorithm is developed to solve the model.A large-scale case using 246 trains in the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed corridor is applied to demonstrate the model's applicability.In Chapter 5,a capacitated lot sizing problem model is also developed to establish a distribution plan for ambient food products in CSHRs(AF-DPP-CSHRs).Decision makers attempt to determine the locations for purchasing different types of food products and to control the inventory levels of trains during their trips considering the storage capacities and time-varying passenger demands of trains,which varies from stop to stop.A cost function with a nonlinear Bureau of Public Roads form is introduced in the model to reflect congestion due to the interactions between the process of meal provisioning and in-station pedestrian flows.The model is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear programming problem.To address the nonlinear term,a Lagrangian substitution based solution approach is adopted to provide an upper bound by decomposing the model into a mixed integer linear programming model based on a multi-item capacitated lot-sizing framework and a sequence of univariate concave maximization models.A lower bound is provided by generating a feasible solution for the model.A subgradient algorithm is employed to improve the solution quality iteratively.A case study using 246 trains on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed corridor is used to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model and algorithm in real-world situations.In summary,many insights provided by above studies help us to understand the complexity of time critical frame in food supply chain management better and to achieve a real-world CSHRs' operations efficiently.