PhD Defence Alberto Giudici
In his dissertation 'Cooperation, Reliability, and Matching in Inland Freight Transport', Alberto Giudici explored inland container and bulk transport, which focused on the intercontinental journey connecting production areas to port, ports to warehouses, and the last-mile distribution. He theorised three solutions addressing the improvement of transport performance in terms of capacity, technology, and infrastructure. Alberto Giudici successfully defended his dissertation 'Cooperation, reliability, and matching in inland freight transport' on Thursday, 1 December 2022. His supervisors were Prof. Rob Zuidwijk (RSM), Dr. Tao Lu (University of Connecticut), and Prof. Clemens Thielen (Technische Universitaet Muenchen) Other members of his Doctoral Committee were Dr B Bilge Atasoy (TU Delft) Dr Jan van Dalen (RSM), Prof. Rommert Dekker (ESE), Prof.Jan Fransoo (Tilburg University), Prof. Martijn Mes (University of Twente) and Prof. Iris Vis (University of Groningen).
About Alberto Giudici
Alberto Giudici was born in Monza, Italy, on June 12, 1991. He studied mathematics in Italy (Universita' di Milano-Bicocca) and Germany (TU Kaiserslautern), following his passion for knowledge and abstract modeling. In 2016, he joined a PhD-track at RSM to discover, if not test, whether the mathematics he learned could support and improve logistical processes. This path saw him involved first in two European projects, SELIS and PLANET, and later in collaboration with a startup operating a digital marketplace. Coming towards the end of his Ph.D., he decided to attempt the road less traveled by: combining industry and academia on an equal share. Since November 2021, he has worked at Uturn as an Operations Research Analyst and at RSM, involved in the 4TEURN project.
Alberto's research interests include the theoretical and data-driven analysis and optimization of transport systems and the digital marketplace. His work has been published in Transportation Science and presented at several international conferences, including the INFORMS Annual Meeting, European Conference on Operational Research, and Triennial Symposium on Transportation Analysis. He has also served as an ad-hoc reviewer of various journals, such as the European Journal of Operations Research and the Journal of Heuristics.
Matching in Inland Freight Transport
Thesis Abstract
Container transport allowed for global trade, and trade has lifted the welfare and fostered the development of nations worldwide. The exchange of goods required the movements of those along a chain of parties and companies. While intercontinental transport sustains global trade, the inland transport sector plays a critical role in regions' and countries' competitive performance. This thesis focuses on inland container and bulk transport, the first and end part of the intercontinental journey, which connects production areas to ports, and ports to warehouses and last-mile distribution.
In this setting, this research addresses the challenge of improving transport performance by focusing on the utilization of transport capacity given immutable transport demand, technology, and infrastructure. A particular focus is on the plan of transport execution and its effect on transport capacity utilization. From such a problem perspective, three main solutions are studied: first, cooperation among transport operators as a way for companies to improve their capacity utilization by demand pooling and supply sharing; second, advanced transport planning models based on adaptive decisions that are cost-efficient while guaranteeing a certain level of reliability as a way to improve capacity utilization when transport times are uncertain; third, matching algorithms for digital transport marketplaces as a way to improve the utilization of capacity by effectively match demand and supply.
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Photos: Michelle Muus / Michelle Muus Fotografie
