Due to the complexity of urban area, the city vehicle routing problem has been a difficult problem. The problem has involved factors such as parking availability, road conditions, and traffic congestion, all of which increase transportation costs and delivery times. To resolve this problem, one effective solution can be the use of parcel lockers located near customer sites, where products are stored for customers to pick up. When a vehicle delivers products to a designated parcel locker, customers in the vicinity must pick up their products from that locker. Recently, identifying optimal locations for these parcel lockers has become an important research issue. This paper addresses the parcel locker location problem within the context of urban traffic congestion. By considering dynamic environmental factors, we propose a Markov decision process model to tackle the city vehicle routing problem. To ensure more real situations, we have used optimal paths for distances between two nodes. Numerical results demonstrate the viability of our model and solution strategy.

In supply chain, most partners except the top level suppliers have inbound and outbound logistics. For example, toll manufacturing companies get unprocessed materials from a requesting company and send the processed materials back to the company after toll processing. Accordingly, those companies have inbound and outbound transportation costs in their total logistics costs. For many cases, the company may make the schedule of distributions by considering only the due delivery dates. However, the inbound and outbound transportation costs could significantly affect the total logistics costs. Thus, this paper considers the inbound and outbound transportation costs to find the optimal distribution plans. In addition, we have considered the inventory holding costs as well with transportation costs. From the experimental results, we have provided the optimal strategies for the distributions of replenishment as well as deliveries.

This study focuses on the application of a new measurement method that quantifies the residual color of filtered water using a spectrocolorimeter after filtering the discolored substances. It was confirmed through the color and turbidity cross-test that the discolored substances cannot be measured effectively with the current legal color and turbidity test method. Therefore, the National Institute of Environmental Research's filter testing method, which involves filtering the sample through 0.45 μm filter and visually inspecting the color, was improved. A membrane filter colorimetry (MFC) method was established by measuring the color difference (ΔE*ab(65)) of the filtered filter using a spectrophotometer and expressing it as filter color unit (FCU). Using the MFC method, the FCU for reference materials such as iron and manganese, as well as field samples, was measured. The results showed a high correlation with turbidity, and the color difference patterns varied depending on the type of reference materials and field samples. This indicates that the MFC method is an effective new measurement method of discolored tap water.

Due to the issue of the sustainability in transportation area, the number of electric vehicles has significantly increased. Most automakers have decided or planned to manufacture the electric vehicles rather than carbon fueled vehicles. However, there are still some problems to figure out for the electric vehicles such as long charging time, driving ranges, supply of charging stations. Since the speed of growing the number of electric vehicles is faster than that of the number of charging stations, there are lack of supplies of charging stations for electric vehicles and imbalances of the location of the charging stations. Thus, the location problem of charging stations is one of important issues for the electric vehicles. Studies have conducted to find the optimal locations for the charging stations. Most studies have formulated the problem with deterministic or hierarchical models. In this paper, we have investigated the fluctuations of locations and the capacity of charging stations. We proposed a mathematical model for the location problem of charging stations with the vehicle routing problem. Numerical examples provide the strategy for the location routing problems of the electric vehicles.