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Considered an essential link in the logistics chain, the port has undergone various restructurings and evolutions throughout generations. Many economic, socioeconomic, political, and environmental factors require ports to move towards digitalization and sustainability. To this end, ports are required to change into smart ports that align with new Industry 4.0 practices to ensure their sustainability. This study proposes a systematic review of the literature on the emerging smart port concept to continue the work started by Buiza et al. and Molavi et al., aiming at a broader and comprehensive understanding of the smart port concept by business domain to fill this gap in literature. This research proposes 11 smart port characteristics grouped into 7 business domains. A definition is also proposed to update the concept.

This article presents an educational game to engage university and industrial stakeholders in collaborative training for supply chain management courses. The game will help students learn complex supply chain management issues. There are two integrated parts: a case ethod through an industrial case and an activity-based game featuring role plays based on international television shows such as Dragons’ Den in Canada or Shark Tank in the United States. We developed a game framework to illustrate how the game can be prepared and played in classrooms. Although the game is primarily developed for classroom teaching, it may be adapted to other training environments. We have provided two examples to demonstrate how the game can be played as a short game in conference environments. Game experiences and feedback are presented with comments from various game participants. By interacting with stakeholders and tackling a real-world business case, students can better understand stakeholders’ business goals, the importance of supply chain collaboration, and the impacts on supply chain decisions.

A large portion of expenses in the forest industries is associated with wood supply procurement. Numerous suppliers are involved and securing wood supply contracts with competitive prices is a cons...

The growth of goods transported by ship affects the entire maritime industry, which is central to the global supply chain. Faced with an increased pressure from the industry, ports need greater visibility on the flow of goods and logistics operations. To tackle this challenge, improvement opportunities as well as weaknesses must be identified in order to define an efficient data acquisition strategy that will allow port authorities to enhance their current visibility within their port ecosystem. This article presents the simulation of a digital shadow based on a Canadian port case study. The study uses the simulation of a digital shadow to diagnose a Canadian port authority’s current visibility, with an accent on data accuracy, in order to identify improvement opportunities aimed at overcoming weaknesses identified in a current practice scenario and then compare the performance of the current system with said improvements in a second scenario. To our knowledge, this is the first simulation study on visibility performance assessment in a port’s digital shadow.

Quebec, a province in Canada, is well positioned in the global bioeconomy. Its regions are overflowing with forest, agricultural crops or other organic residues that can be recovered and c...

This study analyzes the sustainability of the circular economy model on winter road maintenance. Winter road maintenance involves plowing snow, spreading abrasives, and then sweeping and collecting the remaining abrasives at the end of the winter season. Traditionally, in the linear approach, the collected sweepings are landfilled, which incurs landfilling costs for resources that could be reused. To address this issue, we consider the option of recycling sweepings for use in the following winter seasons. We develop a discrete-event simulation model that estimates the economic and environmental benefits of this option. Using data from a case study of a highway in Quebec, Canada, the model shows that introducing circular economy practices in winter road maintenance results in less material going to landfills, lower costs, less use of aggregates from virgin materials, and lower CO2 emissions compared to the linear approach. A subsequent sensitivity analysis reveals that the quantity of sweepings collected greatly influences the outcomes.

This study deals with subject sustainability assessment for industrial parks which are seen as systems of interrelated companies and infrastructures. Although sustainability was introduced into mainstream policy discourse several decades ago, it remains complex to assess, and thus to improve in an integrated way. This is particularly true for such elaborate structures as industrial parks. However, the literature has made little effort to present tools for industrial parks managers to take decisions towards sustainability. The paper develops a sustainability assessment framework aimed at industrial parks' managers. The model is based on a multi-criteria compromise aggregation principle and relies on a preliminary systemic deployment of industrial park sustainability. The presented assessment uses a double aggregation mechanism using the weighted arithmetic mean (WAM) and the Choquet integral (CI) to account for the interrelations between stakeholders involved in an industrial park. This double aggregation results in two level of assessment, offering a more comprehensive view of the examined industrial park. A first level of assessment allows managers to control and improve the performance of their industrial parks in each pillar of sustainability. The second level is the assessment of the overall sustainability, which supports the managers' analysis of their strategy to achieve sustainability. As an illustration, the model is used to assess the sustainability of a Canadian industrial park. Application of the model shows that the completion of the studied industrial park's action plan results in reaching a 54% sustainability performance considering the managers' long-term sustainability strategy and that their vision of sustainability moderately favors the simultaneous satisfaction of economic criteria with environmental or social criteria. These results illustrates the capacity of the model to guide managers in the sustainable development of their industrial parks.

With the current growth of the maritime industry, which is a key element for many supply chains worldwide, ports seek to increase their capacity and performance in order to tackle challenges and opportunities created by the increased demand in the industry. Port expansion is an efficient way to meet this objective, but requires important resources and careful planning. Before undertaking such a major project, it is important for a port to have a firm grasp and understanding of its current capacity as well as the expansion’s requirements and limitations in light of its traffic forecasts. This article presents the data analysis realized as part of an expansion project of a Canadian port case. The data analysis is executed in order to feed the first simulation model of its kind in this sector that will jointly consider the logistics operations taking place in the current port and its new terminal. This article addresses the first steps of the model’s conception through data analysis as well as solutions to problems encountered. As the study is underway, the preliminary results of the work are presented.

Interest has been raised by the recent identification of potential savings through collaborative planning in logistics operations. Even though substantial savings can be realized, two key questions exist: (i) how should potential savings be divided among a group of collaborating companies and (ii) among potential collaborating companies, how should collaborating group(s) be formed? These two questions are studied in a specific context: among potential collaborating companies; a subset, denoted the leading companies, performs collaborative planning on behalf of the others and together, they initiate formation of a collaborating group. We use the concept of a business model to detail such context. Based on the literature on network formation where potential savings are modelled by a cooperative game, four business models are explored in four different subsets of leading companies. We propose a network model as a method to determine the stable collaborating group in each computation. A case study including eight forest companies is described and analyzed. Results show that very different solution characteristics can be achieved depending on the business model selected.

Transportation is an important part of the Canadian furniture industry supply chain. Even though there are often several manufacturers shipping in the same market region, coordination between two or more manufacturers is rare. Recently, important potential cost savings and delivery time reduction have been identified through transportation collaboration. In this paper we propose and test on a case study involving four furniture companies, a logistics scenario that allows transportation collaboration. Moreover, we address the key issue of cost savings sharing, especially when heterogeneous requirements by each collaborating company impact the cost-savings. To do so, we propose a new cost allocation method that is validated through a case study. Sensibility analysis and details about the actual outcome of the case study complete the discussion.

In order to beat the competition, access new markets and respect operational, social and environmental constraints, enterprises establish collaborations with many other business entities. Furthermore, with costs and information sharing, organizations have the opportunity to optimize their logistics activities. However, each enterprise has its own objectives and typically makes its own planning decisions to meet these objectives. Therefore, it becomes crucial to determine how business entities will work together as well as the value of the collaboration. Specifically, it is necessary to identify how logistics activities will be planned and executed, who will take the leadership of the collaboration and how benefits will be shared. In this article, we explain how efficiently build and manage inter-firms relationships. Moreover, we propose five coordination mechanisms that contribute to ensure information sharing, the coordination of logistics activities and the share of benefits. Case studies are used to demonstrate the utility of the framework.

Transportation accounts for a significant part of wood procurement cost, and this has generated a considerable amount of R&D efforts in many countries. In this chapter, we first introduce the vital role played by transportation in the forest value chain, and stress the information needed for decision making. Following this, we distinguish the different transportation planning decisions made at the strategic, tactical, operational and real time levels, and highlight their integration with other decisions in the forest value chain. For each level, we present a number of transportation problems and related solution methods. The strategic level often deals with designing the network and transportation mode selection, while the tactical level mainly concerns allocation rules. The operational level typically involves a vehicle routing problem, and wood reception is discussed at the real time level. Four examples of successful applications in industry are also described and the results are reported. Lastly, the chapter is concluded with open research topics.

The chapter focuses on the forest management decisions undertaken by the private industrial forestland owners concerning medium- and short-term forest planning. Firstly, the scope of forest tactical and operational planning is bounded by comparison with strategic planning as presented in this chapter and with the flow and transportation problems as they are presented in Chap. 9.

International audience; Collaborative logistics is increasingly emerging as a new opportunity for cost reduction through internal and cross chains coordination. This paper presents different coordination mechanisms to support collaborative logistics. These mechanisms are differentiated by their planning function, their sharing approach and the information, decision and financial flows. Often, the logistics planning is run first, and secondly, the sharing is set on the basis of the plan. However, recently, new approaches have been proposed where both the logistics plan and the sharing are optimized simultaneously. Constraints on the financial flows also introduce specificities to the coordination mechanisms and these are described and discussed. Finally, the proposed coordination mechanisms are used to describe a series of research and applied projects in which collaborative logistics has been implemented.

Collaborative logistics is becoming more important in today’s industry. This is driven by increased environmental concerns, improved efficiency through collaborative planning supporting resources sharing and new business models implementation. This paper explores collaborative logistics and reports on business applications within the forest products industry in Sweden and Canada. It first describes current opportunities in collaborative planning. It then discusses issues related to building the coalition as well as sharing resources and benefits. Three business cases are described and used to support the discussion around these main issues. Finally, different challenges are detailed, opening new paths for researchers in the field.

Transportation has become an increasingly important part of the Canadian furniture industry supply chain. Even when different furniture companies ship to the same regions, the same cities and/or the same furniture retailers, coordination between two or more companies is rare. Recently, interest in collaborative transportation planning to support coordination has intensified as important potential benefits (e.g. cost and delivery time reductions) have been identified. Even though substantial benefits can be realized, the methods for sharing benefits among companies as well as the leadership of the collaboration implementation are key issues in deciding on a logistics scenario for the collaboration. In this paper, the impacts of these two key issues are illustrated using an industrial case study of four Canadian furniture companies shipping to the United-States.