Amr Eltawil

• PhD of Engineering
• Chair at Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology

Operating Rooms (ORs) are pivotal hospital resources, significantly impacting expenses and revenue. This paper introduces a stochastic bi-objective model for OR allocation and scheduling of elective surgeries, considering surgeons’ preferences for specific ORs and preferred start times, as well as the integration of collaborative surgeries (CSs)—wh...

This work proposes a novel method of Integrated Solution Approach from the developed Mathematical model and Simulation model (ISAMS) for the Twin-Automated Stacking Crane (Twin-ASC) operation. The Twin-ASC system is a special configuration of Yard Crane (YC) that is common in most of the Automated Container Terminals (ACTs), and their performance s...

Background: Container terminals (CTs) have constantly administered truck appointment systems (TASs) to effectively accomplish the planning and scheduling of drayage operations. However, since the operations in the gate and yard area of a CT are stochastic, there is a need to incorporate uncertainty during the development and execution of appointmen...

Recent disruptive events, such as COVID-19 and Russia–Ukraine conflict, had a significant impact of global supply chains. Digital supply chain twins have been proposed in order to provide decision makers with an effective and efficient tool to mitigate disruption impact. This paper introduces a hybrid deep learning approach for disruption detection...

Background: In container terminals, optimizing the scheduling of external trucks and yard cranes is crucial as it directly impacts the truck turnaround time, which is one of the most critical performance measures. Furthermore, proper scheduling of external trucks contributes to reducing CO2 emissions. Methods: This paper proposes a new approach bas...

With the expansion of online shopping, urban logistics must handle the increasing customer demand, making the last-mile delivery process more challenging. Furthermore, this expansion significantly contributes to companies' distribution costs. To overcome some of the last-mile delivery costs, parcel lockers-as a delivery option-can be an alternative...

Purpose: Recent disruptive events, such as COVID-19 and Russia-Ukraine conflict, had a significant impact of global supply chains. Digital supply chain twins have been proposed in order to provide decision makers with an effective and efficient tool to mitigate disruption impact. Methods: This paper introduces a hybrid deep learning approach for d...

This paper introduces an approach for optimal scheduling of external trucks in container terminals. The proposed approach integrates the k-means clustering algorithm with a bi-objective optimization model. The k-means clustering algorithm matches the export and import containers into tuples, reducing the number of empty trips. The optimization mode...

Last-mile delivery costs are increasingly growing due to the rapid growth in E-commerce and the proliferation of online shopping especially after COVID-19 crisis. Integrating shared location delivery systems with home delivery has been a new trend in tackling last mile delivery challenges. This paper studies the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem...

The Twin-Automated Stacking Crane (Twin-ASC) system is a special configuration of Yard Crane (YC) that is common in most of the Automated Container Terminals (ACTs) used for stacking and retrieving containers on the yard side of a Container Terminal (CT). The usual objective when scheduling the Twin-ASC to perform a given set of transport jobs is t...

Automated Container Terminals (ACTs) have attracted an increasing number of researchers over the last decade, compared to conventional terminals, because of their ability to increase terminal productivity and performance and cope with the increasing containerized trade volumes. Also, there ae several developments in the handling equipment used in A...

Background: The key performance index for the container terminals is the vessel berthing time which is highly affected by the scheduling of the different handling equipment. Proper integrated scheduling of the handling equipment is crucial, especially in automated container terminals, where all the handling equipment is automated and must be coordi...

Background: Scheduling the arrival of external trucks in container terminals is a critical operational decision that faces both terminal managers and trucking companies. This issue is crucial for both stakeholders since the random arrival of trucks causes congestion in the terminals and extended delays for the trucks. The objective of scheduling ex...

Off-site construction is a modern construction method that brings many sustainability merits to the built environment. However, the sub-optimal planning decisions (e.g., resource allocation , logistics and overtime planning decisions) of off-site construction projects can easily wipe away their sustainability merits. Therefore, simulation modelling...

The parallel stack loading problem (PSLP) is an NP-hard problem. In this problem, the objective is to optimize assigning a group of arriving items to empty slots of parallel stacks in a storage bay. The PSLP aims to find a bay configuration that minimizes the future retrieval effort of these items. The retrieval effort is generally represented by t...

Background: The slot planning problem is a container allocation problem within a certain location on a vessel. It is considered a sub-problem of a successful decomposition approach for the container vessel stowage planning problem. This decision has a direct effect on container handling operations and the vessel berthing time, which are key indicat...

Traffic congestion is one of the challenges that face urban cities’ planners. It affects the environment as it increases the emissions of CO2 and affects the logistics systems as it may increase the travel time of different vehicles. Scheduling traffic signals is one of the ways to solve this problem. In the urban traffic signal scheduling problem,...

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a buzzing technology nowadays. It is believed to have the potential for revolutionizing today’s world. Several projects and publications addressed the use of IoT in various applications such as smart cities, smart homes, wearables, smart grids, connected vehicles, and health care. However, few works addressed the pot...

The performance of a container terminal is typically evaluated using two main indicators: the vessel berthing time and the truck turnaround time. These two indicators are significantly influenced by the truck’s arrivals and departures to/from the container terminal. In the truck appointment scheduling problem, it is desired to designate a time slot...

This paper presents an integrated strategic-tactical planning model for the sugar beet supply chain problem. The model includes the critical agricultural and industrial decisions coupled with the transportation of crops by capacitated vehicles from farms to the processing facilities. In the agricultural stage, the proposed model is used to analyze...

Increasing number of cancer survivors besides effective medications increase the demand for cancer care services. Therefore, managers have to investigate new ways to enhance the operational performance of the outpatient chemotherapy clinics (OCCs). However, the management process is complex due to significant variability in treatment times as a res...

The nurse rostering problem refers to the assignment of nurses to daily shifts according to the required demand of each shift and day, with consideration for the operational requirements and nurses’ preferences. This problem is known to be an NP-hard problem, difficult to be solved using the known exact solution methods especially for large size in...

Smart Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS) constitute a vital necessity for optimizing electricity usage and saving energy in smart grids. However, these systems rely on dynamic factors that are stochastic and difficult to predict, such as the load consumption and electricity prices. Therefore, constructing an efficient control system for resident...

The tactical, technical, and economic considerations are critical factors in evaluating crop rotation decisions in any agricultural system. This system suffers from uncertainties that are amplified during the multi-period rotation planning. This study considers the crop rotation problem with water supply/demand and net return uncertainties, which v...

Smart traffic lights control systems started to appear in use on our roads particularly in the metropolitan areas. The technology aims to smoothen the flow of vehicles within junctions with the least waiting time and queue length which are the most popular metrics of traffic lights system. In this type of control system, traffic lights scheduling,...

Electricity load forecasting has been a substantial problem in the electric power system management process. An accurate forecasting model is essential to avoid imprecise predictions that can negatively affect system efficiency, economy, and sustainability. Among several prediction techniques, deep learning methods, especially the Long Short-Term M...

Recently, Internet of Things (IoT) have found applications in several areas that require effective communication to handle uncertainties such as in smart ports, smart factories, and smart logistics. This can also be extended to solve the problems of equipment downtime and the conflict with operations scheduling in container terminals. This study pr...

The pollution routing problem is a 'Green logistics' practice that extends the classical vehicle routing problem to consider sustainable logistics issues. To do so, wider objectives are included; which naturally leads to more complex combinatorial optimization problems. This paper introduces a new mathematical model to solve the routing problem of...

Despite a significant number of studies that have focused on the operational efficiency of container terminals, existing literature has paid little attention to improving energy efficiency, e.g., energy consumption and negative externalities in container terminals. Most researchers consider energy-saving goals when allocating berths and quay cranes...

In container terminals, the shipping containers are stored temporarily in yards in the form of bays composed of vertical stacks and horizontal rows. When there is a need to retrieve a target container, it may not be located on the top of its stack, in such a case, the containers above it are called blocking containers. These blocking containers sho...

In container terminals, the shipping containers are stored temporarily in yards in the form of bays composed of vertical stacks and horizontal rows. When there is a need to retrieve a target container, it may not be located on the top of its stack, in such a case, the containers above it are called blocking containers. These blocking containers sho...

The truck scheduling problem in container terminals has become quite challenging due to the continuous growth of the world seaborne trade. Proper planning of the arrival of trucks to the terminal gate is necessary to limit truck congestion, not only inside the terminal but also in the surrounding area. One of the methodologies that are implemented...

Despite the negative consequences on society and environment, urban freight transport is critical for the prosperity of cities. Decision makers have considered the horizontal collaboration between carriers as a solution to reduce the total transportation cost and the related negative impacts. In literature, the collaborative freight delivery is mod...

This study focuses on scheduling twin Automated Stacking Cranes (ASCs) that collaborate to serve storage and retrieval jobs from opposite ends of a block. Since the ASCs cannot cross each other, there is a handshake bay that serves as a temporary storage location so that one crane can leave a job for the other to complete. A proposed mixed integer...

This research article presents a novel design of a hybrid evolutionary-simplex search method to solve the class of general nonlinear constrained optimization problems. In this article, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) method and the Nelder–Mead (NM) simplex search algorithm are utilized in a unified way to enhance the overall performance of th...

The nurse rostering problem is a well-known NP-hard scheduling problem that address the assignment of nurses to daily shifts with considerations for a set of operational regulations and nurses preferences. Many meta-heuristics were adopted to solve the nurse rostering problem. One of the frequently used heuristics is the Variable Neighborhood Searc...

This paper presents a new formulation and solution for the crop rotation planning problem. The proposed model is respecting both agronomic and economic constraints with an objective of maximizing the total net return accumulated at the end of the rotation cycle. The formulation of the model considers the feasible alternatives in developing the crop...

Traffic congestion is one of the most significant problems in large cities, especially during peak hours. Urban traffic lights scheduling optimization plays an important role to overcome traffic jams. In this paper an empirical study was performed to minimize the average waiting time and the average queue length in two consecutive intersections by...

Due to the continual increase of the global containerized trade, many container terminals face the problem of high demands that their current resource capacity cannot afford. The consequences of such situation are not only the long queues of trucks at the entrance gates and storage yards but also the large turnaround times of trucks. In response, T...

The production-inventory-distribution-routing problem is an integrated supply chain management problem that combines decisions on several functions. The objective is to minimise the total costs without violating demand fulfilment policy. A production-inventory-distribution-routing problem of medium size is a combinatorial optimisation problem mostl...

The study highlights a smart tourism mobile application that generates diversified interactions among multiple stakeholders in the smart tourism industry. In the previous smart tourism studies, scholars have argued two research limitations. First, a gap exists in aspects of the tourists' and service providers' information environments for efficient...

The study highlights a smart tourism mobile application that generates diversified interactions among multiple stakeholders in the smart tourism industry. In the previous smart tourism studies, scholars have argued two research limitations. First, a gap exists in aspects of the tourists' and service providers' information environments for efficient...

The study highlights a smart tourism mobile application that generates diversified interactions among multiple stakeholders in the smart tourism industry. In the previous smart tourism studies, scholars have argued two research limitations. First, a gap exists in aspects of the tourists' and service providers' information environments for efficient...

In Container Terminals (CTs), many containers are daily delivered by a large number of External Trucks (ETs) which lead to several issues such as long waiting times at gates and yards, harmful emissions, and low productivity of the CTs. To resolve these issues, truck appointment systems are used to schedule appointments of ETs and achieve more bala...

In container terminal yards, the Container Relocation Problem (CRP) aims to minimize the needed relocations of blocking containers above the container that would be retrieved. In this paper a simulated annealing based approach for the restricted version of the CRP is proposed. The proposed approach does not need any transformation of the problem in...

Investigating the trends of hydro-meteorological variables and checking its variability are of great importance for water resources management and development in the River Nile basin. The present study aimed to analyze the rainfall variability and trends in the Upper Blue Nile Basin (UBNB) over a period from 1953 to 2014. Variability analysis showe...

Recently, the flow shop sequencing problem in precast plants has been witnessing remarkable interest from many researchers. This paper contributes to recent literature by providing a simulation-based optimization approach to solve the precast flow shop sequencing problem taking into account the uncertainty of processing times of precast production...

Unquestionably, Precast Supply Chain (PSC) abounds with many risks distributed along its echelons. Despite that there is a wide consensus among the previous studies about the negative impact of these risks on the PSC performance, its effect on making operational decisions in precast plants such as scheduling of Precast Components (PCs) is still amb...

A mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model for production planning in garment industry is developed. The model considers capacity and financial planning decisions for mixed make-to-order (MTO)/maketo- stock (MTS) environment when demand exhibits predictable fluctuations. In the literature, existing models present little focus for capacity dist...

This study suggests a framework for employing IoT to transform a traditional university campus to a smart, innovative, and sustainable one with considering the social and environmental interactions.

The preliminary results obtained from testing the proposed algorithm on the 24 benchmark instances were compared to three other methods from literature (ejection chain metaheuristic, branch and price, and Gurobi® solver). The proposed VNSHWCF algorithm outperformed the ejection chain heuristic in 20 instances. Comparing to the other two methods, th...

https://www.porttechnology.org/technical_papers/collaborative_truck_schedules https://www.porttechnology.org/news/tech_wisdom_using_iot_truck_scheduling The Internet of Things (IoT) is already transforming business and industry all over the world. By the year 2020, approximately 80 billion connected devices will be operating within the IoT, accord...

The patient appointment scheduling problem in outpatient chemotherapy clinics is one of the most important and challenging problems due to large numbers of binary variables and thus unrealistic computation times. In this paper, we propose a new approach inspired from cellular manufacturing to reduce the number of binary variables and constraints. T...

In Container Terminals, managing the external truck arrivals is one of the essential managerial activities that, typically, the terminal operators conduct continuously on the short term using a Truck Appointment System (TAS). However, the trucking companies are influenced by the developed appointments and schedules which affect their operations and...

In this paper, discrete event simulation was utilized to gain more insight into the behavior of a Television Printed Circuit Board (TV PCB) assembly line in one of the leading companies in the Middle East and Africa. The simulation output shows an imbalance in workload between workstations that hinder any opportunity for improvement. Therefore, man...

Simulation modeling (SM) is going to gain more interest due to the rise of Industry 4.0. Although, SM has been used extensively to analyze the behavior of complex manufacturing systems in a cost-efficient manner without disrupting the production process, it has many limitations that contradict with the industry 4.0 era. These limitations include; t...

In this paper, we develop an ontological model to check the consistency in the design process for identifying potential conflicts and improving communication and coordination in outpatient chemotherapy clinics (OCCs). The paper describes how potential inconsistency might be detected through a conceptual model to account for the context of OCCs usin...

Effective scheduling of yard crane operations is essential to ensure seamless flow of the containers in a container terminal, which leads to a high terminal efficiency. In this paper, the problem of scheduling yard crane to perform stacking and retrieving requests with different arrival times is presented. In particular, the automated terminal with...

Human resources are the key resource in the healthcare industry. That is why personnel scheduling is a vital issue in such industry. Nurses are one of these human resources that have a great impact on the quality of healthcare services. The contribution of this paper is twofold. Firstly, the paper reviews the recent literature that discusses the nu...

In this paper, discrete event simulation and design of experiments technique are used for assembly line balancing, and productivity improvement in a leading Egyptian manufacturer of home appliances. Currently, there exists a large amount of work in process between departments due to the unbalance of workload through the assembly line. In order to s...

This paper highlights information systems development of a mobile decision support system application that monitors real-time container terminal operations. Previous information systems studies have argued lack of information and communication in the container port regarding its managerial operations and flow of information among port stakeholders....

In this paper, we develop a mobile-based collaboration platform for production planning called Mobi-Manager. The platform is built for the furniture industry based on the case Egyptian furniture production sector. The platform focuses on multiple stakeholders’ interactions and communications in the typical furniture manufacturing factory. From the...

The development of hybrid algorithms is becoming an important topic in the global optimization research area. This article proposes a new technique in hybridizing the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm and the Nelder–Mead (NM) simplex search algorithm to solve general nonlinear unconstrained optimization problems. Unlike traditional hybrid...

Chemotherapy is a drug infusion process used to eradicate cancerous cells while controlling chemotherapy complications at the same time. The chemotherapy management problem has two tributaries; drug management and operations management, namely; oncologists seek optimal treatment plans whereas; operations managers seek optimal operation performance...

This paper introduces a system dynamics model to address the effectiveness of chemotherapy treatment plan. This model includes all the treatment process variables which have been considered in the literature; moreover, we propose new variables such as the impairment caused by both the tumor growth and the adverse effect of chemotherapy doses, and t...

The problem of appointment scheduling in outpatient chemotherapy departments is a hard problem due to the fact of large number of variables, and thus unrealistic computation times in the current models are required. In this paper, we propose a new approach inspired by the cellular manufacturing concept to reduce the number of variables and constrai...

The Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP) is one of the most popular routing problems. In the CVRP, a fleet of capacitated vehicles located at a central depot are used to deliver products to a set of geographically dispersed customers with known demand. In this work, a new two-step approach to solve the CVRP with a heterogeneous fleet is propo...

This paper reviews the different forms of integrated simulation approaches and their applications in healthcare systems. Integrated simulation approaches can be defined as the use of two or more individual simulation methods in modelling and solving a single problem or application; including discrete-event simulation (DES), agent-based simulation (...

Increasing number of cancer survivors besides efficient medications render demand for cancer service care dramatically increasing. Hence, stakeholders have to investigate new ways in order to enhance cancer treatment operational performance. Outpatient chemotherapy management is a complex problem due to the large variability in treatment times as a...

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the recent communication paradigm which intends to integrate transparently and impeccably a large number of different and diverse systems. IoTs provide intercommunication to selected subdivisions of a system for the development of digital services within container terminals. Generally, the design of IoT is very compl...

Given the rising growth in containerized trade, Container Terminals (CTs) are facing truck congestion at the gate and yard. Truck congestion problems not only result in long queues of trucks at the terminal gates and yards but also leads to long turn times of trucks and environmentally harmful emissions. As a result, many terminals are seeking to s...

Most of the current simulation models focus on implementation details without grasping the essence of the system, which makes it difficult to understand the core and the stable part of an enterprise. In this paper, we develop a Design and Engineering Methodology for Organization (DEMO)-based simulation model that combines simulation and the enterpr...

The assembly line balancing problem belongs to the class of NP-hard combinatorial optimisation problem. For several decades’ line balancing took attention of researchers who are trying to find the solutions for real world applications. Although tremendous works have been done, the gap still exists between the research and the real problems. This pa...

This paper reviews the different forms of integrated simulation approaches and their applications in healthcare systems. Integrated simulation apaches can be defined as the use of two or more individual simulation methods in modelling and solving a single problem or application; including discrete-event simulation (DES), agent-based simulation (ABS...

The production-inventory-distribution-routing problem is an integrated supply chain management problem that combines decisions on several functions. The objective is to minimize the total costs without violating demand fulfillment policy. A production-inventory-distribution-routing problem of medium size is a combinatorial optimization problem most...

Healthcare management has received tremendous interest among researchers as it deals with human health. In this paper, two applications of scheduling on healthcare systems are studied. These two applications are outpatient appointment scheduling and chemotherapy outpatient appointment scheduling. We hold a scientific comparison based on computation...

In container terminal operations, the delay of containers delivery is a common problem that confronts both the terminal operator and the customers represented by the trucking companies. One source of this delay is due to the long waiting time of the transporting trucks at container terminals (CTs). In this paper, the problem of long turn time for e...

Chemotherapy is one of the most common approaches in cancer treatment. The problem with chemotherapy is that it does not only kill the cancerous cells, but the therapy affects badly the healthy cells as well. Accumulation of chemother-apy drugs with repeated doses in the patient's body leads to increasing toxicity in the whole body. This paper deve...

As engineers design and carry out physical constructions such as bridges and airplanes, enterprise engineers design and build organizations. Enterprise ontology is the subject dealing with providing paradigms to complex systems. Chemotherapy is one of the approved protocols for treating patients who have cancerous diseases. In this paper, we develo...

The complexity of operations in maritime logistics increases the pressure on stakeholders to use innovative solution approaches to manage the resources, control the operations, and organize the complex interactions. One of the most imperative problems in container terminals (CTs) is the poor scheduling of external trucks’ arrivals. The proper sched...

In container terminals, the integrated planning of berth allocation and quay crane assignment problems has attracted much attention in literature. These problems can be integrated either by functional integration or by deep integration approaches. In the functional integration approach, these problems are integrated by being divided into two sub-pr...