This book deals with inventory systems in supply chains that face risks that could render products unsalable. These risks include possible cooling system failures, transportation risks, packaging errors, handling errors, or natural quality deterioration over time like spoilage of food or blood products. Classical supply chain inventory models do not regard these risks. This thesis introduces novel cost models that consider these risks. It also analyzes how real-time tracking with RFID sensors and smart containers can contribute to decision making. To solve these cost models, this work presents new solution methods based on dynamic programming. In extensive computational studies both with experimental as well as real-life data from large players in the retailer industry, the solution methods prove to lead to substantially lower costs than existing solution methods and heuristics.

Our rapidly changing world has forced business practitioners, in corporation with academic researchers, to respond quickly and develop effective solution methodologies and techniques to handle new challenges in supply chain systems. Supply Chain Optimization, Management and Integration: Emerging Applications presents readers with a rich collection of ideas from researchers who are bridging the gap between the latest in information technology and supply chain management. This book includes theoretical, analytical, and empirical research, comprehensive reviews of relevant research, and case studies of effective applications in the field of SCM. The use of new technologies, methods, and techniques are emphasized by those who have worked with supply chain management across the world for those in the field of information systems.

This volume provides resourceful thinking and insightful management solutions to the many challenges that decision makers face in their predictions, preparations, and implementations of the key elements that our societies and industries need to take as they move toward digitalization and smartness. The discussions within the book aim to uncover the sources of large-scale problems in socio-industrial dilemmas, and the theories that can support these challenges. How theories might also transition to real applications is another question that this book aims to uncover. In answer to the viewpoints expressed by several practitioners and academicians, this book aims to provide both a learning platform which spotlights open questions with related case studies. The relationship between Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0 provides the basis for the expert contributions in this book, highlighting the uses of analytical methods such as mathematical optimization, heuristic methods, decomposition methods, stochastic optimization, and more. The book will prove useful to researchers, students, and engineers in different domains who encounter large scale optimization problems and will encourage them to undertake research in this timely and practical field. The book splits into two parts. The first part covers a general perspective and challenges in a smart society and in industry. The second part covers several case studies and solutions from the operations research perspective for large scale challenges specific to various industry and society related phenomena.

This Research Topic is Volume 2 in the Research Topic series 'Economic and Financial Issues in the Post-COVID-19 World: Implications and Role of Public Health'. Both developed and developing economies have experienced significant risks and uncertainties due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There are still risks and uncertainty shocks of the COVID-19 in every aspect of the global economic and financial system, including investors' decisions and the financial sector's development. In this Research Topic, we aim to understand the dynamics of business, economic, and financial issues - including potential structural changes after the COVID-19 in emerging markets and advanced economies. This Research Topic’s main goal is to provide different aspects and consequences of economic and financial issues in emerging markets and advanced economies after the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we welcome interdisciplinary, empirical, and theoretical papers (panel data studies, survey studies, and time-series analyses) focusing on the business, economic, and financial issues after the COVID-19 crisis. We also welcome policy briefs of people working at central banks, governments, and other public institutions, focusing on these issues.

This book highlights new trends and challenges in research on agents and the new digital and knowledge economy. It includes papers on business- process management, agent-based modeling and simulation, and anthropic-oriented computing, which were originally presented at the 13th International KES Conference on Agents and Multi-Agent Systems – Technologies and Applications (KES-AMSTA 2019) held June 17–19, 2019 at St George’s Bay, St. Julians, Malta. Today’s economy is driven by technologies and knowledge. Digital technologies can free, shift and multiply choices, and often intrude on the territory of other industries by providing new ways of conducting business operations and creating value for customers and companies. As such, the book covers topics such as software agents, multi-agent systems, agent modeling, mobile and cloud computing, big data analysis, business intelligence, artificial intelligence, social systems, computer embedded systems and nature inspired manufacturing, all of which contribute to the modern digital economy. The research presented is of value to researchers and industrial practitioners working in the fields of artificial intelligence, collective computational intelligence, innovative business models, the new digital and knowledge economy and, in particular, agent and multi-agent systems, technologies, tools and applications.

​This volume is a collection of fresh and novel contributions to regional science. They commemorate the scientific inheritance of the founding father of regional science, the late Walter Isard. All papers are written by well-known scholars in the field and serve to highlight the great importance of regional science theory and methodology for a better understanding of current spatial and environmental problems throughout our planet. The book showcases a multidisciplinary panorama of modern regional science research and presents new insights by applying regional science approaches.

The book Intelligent Systems and Applications - Proceedings of the 2020 Intelligent Systems Conference is a remarkable collection of chapters covering a wider range of topics in areas of intelligent systems and artificial intelligence and their applications to the real world. The Conference attracted a total of 545 submissions from many academic pioneering researchers, scientists, industrial engineers, students from all around the world. These submissions underwent a double-blind peer review process. Of those 545 submissions, 177 submissions have been selected to be included in these proceedings. As intelligent systems continue to replace and sometimes outperform human intelligence in decision-making processes, they have enabled a larger number of problems to be tackled more effectively.This branching out of computational intelligence in several directions and use of intelligent systems in everyday applications have created the need for such an international conference which serves as a venue to report on up-to-the-minute innovations and developments. This book collects both theory and application based chapters on all aspects of artificial intelligence, from classical to intelligent scope. We hope that readers find the volume interesting and valuable; it provides the state of the art intelligent methods and techniques for solving real world problems along with a vision of the future research.