IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/orinte/v30y2000i2p54-69.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

TransAlta Redesigns Its Service-Delivery Network

Author

Listed:
  • Erhan Erkut

    (Faculty of Business, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2R6)

  • Tony Myroon

    (Keefe Taylor & Associates, 401 10109-106 Street, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5J 3L7)

  • Kevin Strangway

    (TransAlta Utilities, 100 Chippewa Road, Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada T8A 4H4)

Abstract

TransAlta Utilities (TAU), Canada's largest publicly owned electric utility company, wanted to reduce costs and improve service, establish a call center, and redesign its service-delivery network. To help TAU locate service facilities, determine staffing levels, cluster facilities into call pools, locate equipment, and evaluate the impact of customers performing their own operations and maintenance, we used facility-location and vehicle-routing heuristics, multiple regression, cost/benefit analysis, and a geographical information system. We worked closely with TAU management, and TAU has implemented most of our recommendations.

Suggested Citation

  • Erhan Erkut & Tony Myroon & Kevin Strangway, 2000. "TransAlta Redesigns Its Service-Delivery Network," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 30(2), pages 54-69, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:30:y:2000:i:2:p:54-69
    DOI: 10.1287/inte.30.2.54.11677
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/inte.30.2.54.11677
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/inte.30.2.54.11677?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marshall L. Fisher, 1981. "The Lagrangian Relaxation Method for Solving Integer Programming Problems," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(1), pages 1-18, January.
    2. Marshall L. Fisher & Arnold J. Greenfield & R. Jaikumar & Joseph T. Lester, 1982. "A Computerized Vehicle Routing Application," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 12(4), pages 42-52, August.
    3. Michael B. Teitz & Polly Bart, 1968. "Heuristic Methods for Estimating the Generalized Vertex Median of a Weighted Graph," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 16(5), pages 955-961, October.
    4. G. Clarke & J. W. Wright, 1964. "Scheduling of Vehicles from a Central Depot to a Number of Delivery Points," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 12(4), pages 568-581, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wooseung Jang & Huay H. Lim & Thomas J. Crowe & Gail Raskin & Thomas E. Perkins, 2006. "The Missouri Lottery Optimizes Its Scheduling and Routing to Improve Efficiency and Balance," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 36(4), pages 302-313, August.
    2. Antiopi Panteli & Basilis Boutsinas & Ioannis Giannikos, 2021. "On solving the multiple p-median problem based on biclustering," Operational Research, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 775-799, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Imai, Akio & Nishimura, Etsuko & Current, John, 2007. "A Lagrangian relaxation-based heuristic for the vehicle routing with full container load," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 176(1), pages 87-105, January.
    2. Martinhon, Carlos & Lucena, Abilio & Maculan, Nelson, 2004. "Stronger K-tree relaxations for the vehicle routing problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 158(1), pages 56-71, October.
    3. Mark S. Daskin, 2008. "What you should know about location modeling," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(4), pages 283-294, June.
    4. Snyder, Lawrence V. & Daskin, Mark S. & Teo, Chung-Piaw, 2007. "The stochastic location model with risk pooling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 179(3), pages 1221-1238, June.
    5. Peter Francis & Karen Smilowitz & Michal Tzur, 2006. "The Period Vehicle Routing Problem with Service Choice," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(4), pages 439-454, November.
    6. Marianov, Vladimir & Serra, Daniel & ReVelle, Charles, 1999. "Location of hubs in a competitive environment," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 114(2), pages 363-371, April.
    7. Gong, Manlin & Hu, Yucong & Chen, Zhiwei & Li, Xiaopeng, 2021. "Transfer-based customized modular bus system design with passenger-route assignment optimization," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    8. Wolosewicz, Cathy & Dauzère-Pérès, Stéphane & Aggoune, Riad, 2015. "A Lagrangian heuristic for an integrated lot-sizing and fixed scheduling problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 244(1), pages 3-12.
    9. Smith, John Paul, 1974. "A Lockset analysis of farm to plant milk assembly," ISU General Staff Papers 1974010108000018144, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    10. Jumbo, Olga & Moghaddass, Ramin, 2022. "Resource optimization and image processing for vegetation management programs in power distribution networks," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 319(C).
    11. M Diaby & A L Nsakanda, 2006. "Large-scale capacitated part-routing in the presence of process and routing flexibilities and setup costs," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 57(9), pages 1100-1112, September.
    12. Ogbe, Emmanuel & Li, Xiang, 2017. "A new cross decomposition method for stochastic mixed-integer linear programming," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 256(2), pages 487-499.
    13. Mutsunori Yagiura & Toshihide Ibaraki & Fred Glover, 2004. "An Ejection Chain Approach for the Generalized Assignment Problem," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 16(2), pages 133-151, May.
    14. Weijun Xie & Yanfeng Ouyang & Sze Chun Wong, 2016. "Reliable Location-Routing Design Under Probabilistic Facility Disruptions," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(3), pages 1128-1138, August.
    15. Shangyao Yan & Chun-Ying Chen & Chuan-Che Wu, 2012. "Solution methods for the taxi pooling problem," Transportation, Springer, vol. 39(3), pages 723-748, May.
    16. Martins, Sara & Ostermeier, Manuel & Amorim, Pedro & Hübner, Alexander & Almada-Lobo, Bernardo, 2019. "Product-oriented time window assignment for a multi-compartment vehicle routing problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 276(3), pages 893-909.
    17. Zi-bin Jiang & Qiong Yang, 2016. "A Discrete Fruit Fly Optimization Algorithm for the Traveling Salesman Problem," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(11), pages 1-15, November.
    18. Chou, Chang-Chi & Chiang, Wen-Chu & Chen, Albert Y., 2022. "Emergency medical response in mass casualty incidents considering the traffic congestions in proximity on-site and hospital delays," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    19. A. Scholz & G. Wäscher, 2017. "Order Batching and Picker Routing in manual order picking systems: the benefits of integrated routing," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 25(2), pages 491-520, June.
    20. Keliang Wang & Leonardo Lozano & Carlos Cardonha & David Bergman, 2023. "Optimizing over an Ensemble of Trained Neural Networks," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 35(3), pages 652-674, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:30:y:2000:i:2:p:54-69. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.