1.James M.Tien, Professor, Past President of IEEE SMC, IEEE Fellow, Academician of America National Academy of Engineering, Dean of College of Engineering at the University of Miami, USA

2.C. L. Philip Chen, Professor, Associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics--Part C: Applications and Reviews, Past President of IEEE SMC, IEEE Fellow, AAAS Fellow, Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of Macau, China

3.Martin Dresner, Professor, Chair of the Logistics, Business and Public Policy Department, R.H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, USA

4.Anming Zhang, Professor, YVR Authority Chair Professor in Air Transportation Operations and Logistics Department, Sauder School of Business University of British Columbia, Canada

5.Ruud H. Teunter, Professor, Member of University of Groningen Scientific Committee,The Netherlands Chair OR – Head of Department,Department of Operations, University of Groningen, Dutch

6.Xiaowen Fu, Associate Professor in Aviation and Maritime in Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, University of Sydney Business School, University of Sydney, Australia

 

---

James M. Tien

PhD

DEng (h.c.), NAE

Email: jmtien@miami.edu

Distinguished Professor and Dean, College of     Engineering

University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida

Bio. In 2007, Dr. James M. Tien became a Distinguished Professor and the Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida.  He received the BEE from  Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and the SM, EE and PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  He has held leadership positions at Bell Telephone Laboratories, at the  Rand Corporation, and at Structured Decisions Corporation (which he co-founded).  He joined the Department of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering at RPI in 1977, became Acting  Chair of the department, joined a unique interdisciplinary Department of Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems as its founding Chair, and twice served as the Acting Dean of  Engineering. Dr. Tien has published extensively, been invited to present dozens of plenary lectures, and been honored with both teaching and research awards, including being elected a Fellow  in IEEE, INFORMS and AAAS and being a recipient of the IEEE Joseph G. Wohl Outstanding Career Award, the IEEE Major Educational Innovation Award, the IEEE Norbert Wiener Award,  the IEEE Richard M. Emberson Award, and the IBM Faculty Award. He received a Doctor of Engineering (honoris causa) from Canada’s University of Waterloo and is also an Honorary  Professor at over a dozen non-U.S. universities. Dr. Tien is an elected member of the prestigious U. S. National Academy of Engineering.

After 8 years as Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, Dr. James M. Tien stepped down in 2015; he remains a Distinguished Professor.  He received the BEE from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and the SM, EE and PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  He has held leadership positions at Bell Telephone Laboratories, at the Rand Corporation, and at Structured Decisions Corporation (which he co-founded).  He joined the Department of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering at RPI in 1977, became Acting Chair of the department, joined a unique interdisciplinary Department of Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems as its founding Chair, and twice served as RPI’s Acting Dean of Engineering. Dr. Tien has published extensively, been invited to present dozens of plenary lectures, and been honored with both teaching and research awards, including being elected a Fellow in IEEE, INFORMS and AAAS and being a recipient of the IEEE Joseph G. Wohl Outstanding Career Award, the IEEE Major Educational Innovation Award, the IEEE Norbert Wiener Award, the IEEE Richard M. Emberson Award, and the IBM Faculty Award. He received a Doctor of Engineering (honoris causa) from Canada’s University of Waterloo and is also an Honorary Professor at over a dozen non-U.S. universities.  Dr. Tien is also an elected member of the U. S. National Academy of Engineering.

---

C. L. Philip Chen

Professor, Dean

Associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics--Part C: Applications and Reviews

Past President of IEEE SMC, IEEE Fellow, AAAS Fellow

University of Macau, Macau, China

After having worked at U.S. for 23 years as a tenured professor, as a department head and associate dean in two different universities, he is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Macau, Macau, China and a Chair Professor of the Department of Computer and Information Science.

Dr. Chen is a Fellow of the IEEE and the AAAS. He has been the President of IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society (2012-2013). Currently, he is the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems (2014-) and associate editors of IEEE Access and several IEEE Transactions. He is also the Chair of TC 9.1 Economic and Business Systems of IFAC. His research areas are systems, cybernetics, and computational intelligence. He is also an executive committee member of Chinese Association of Automation, Fellow of CAA and Associate EIC of CAA Communications, a Fellow of Hong Kong Institute of Engineer. A Program Evaluator of ABET (Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology) in Electrical Engineering, Comp Eng, and Software Engineering.

---

Martin Dresner Professor

Email: mdresner@rhsmith.umd.edu

Professor and Chair of the Logistics, Business and Public Policy Department, R.H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland

Martin Dresner has served on the faculty of the R.H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland since 1988, where he is currently Professor and Chair of the Logistics, Business and Public Policy Department.  He received his Ph.D. in Policy Analysis from the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia.  Dresner’s research focuses on two broad areas, air transport policy and logistics management. He has published over 75 papers in refereed journals. Professionally, he is President of the Air Transport Research Society (ATRS), an academic organization devoted to research in the aviation industry.  In addition, Dresner is on the Scientific and Steering Committees of the World Conference on Transportation Research. Dresner is immediate past editor of Research in Transportation Economics and a former editor of Transportation Journal.  He sits on the editorial boards of several journals in the transportation, logistics and supply chain fields. Dresner is a former president of the Transportation and Public Utilities Group (TPUG) of the Allied Social Sciences Association, and of the Transportation Research Forum (TRF).  He has testified before the U.S. House Aviation Subcommittee, and has worked on consulting projects for a number of organizations, including the Maryland Aviation Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Title

Determinants of Operating Performance and Customer Satisfaction in the Service Sector:  The Case of the U.S. Airline Industry.

Abstract:

A series of investigations are conducted into factors that affect the quality of operations and the level of customer satisfaction in a key service sector, notably the U.S. airline industry. Factors investigated include the imposition of fees on checked baggage and the mergers of major U.S. carriers. The baggage fees have contributed to passengers bringing additional bags into passenger cabins, but checking fewer bags in cargo holds. Thus, passenger boarding times have increased, but cargo loading times have decreased. Mergers in the U.S. airline industry have contributed to lower levels of competition due to increased market concentration. Performance measures impacted include the percentage of flights that arrive at their destination on time, the cancellation rate of flights, and the number of customer complaints about lost luggage. Results show that the baggage fees have had a positive effect on operating performance measures, while merger activity has resulted in lower operating performance, at least in the short run.

 

---

Anming Zhang

Professor, YVR Authority Chair Professor in Air Transportation

Operations and Logistics Department, Sauder School of Business

University of British Columbia, Canada

Anming Zhang is a Full Professor in Operations and Logistics and holds Vancouver International Airport Authority Chair Professor in Air Transportation at Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia (UBC). He served as the Chair of the Operations and Logistics Division, Sauder School of Business (2003-2005), and as the Director of UBC’s Centre for Transport Studies (2003-2004). He has been the Vice President (Academic & Program) for the World Air Transport Research Society (ATRS) since 2006. Dr. Zhang is the recipient of the “Yokohama Special Prize for Outstanding Young Researcher” awarded at the 7th World Conference on Transportation Research (WCTR) in Sydney, Australia in 1995, and of the “WCTR-Society Prize”, awarded to the overall best paper of the 8th WCTR in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1998. In June 2014, he won the “Best Overall Paper Prize” at the ITEA (International Transport Economics Association) Conference on Transportation Economics, Toulouse School of Economics, France.

Dr. Zhang has published about 150 refereed journal papers in the areas of transportation, logistics, industrial organization, and trade policy. He has co-authored two recent books: Globalization and Strategic Alliances: The Case of the Airline Industry, 2000, Pergamon Press, Oxford; and Air Cargo in Mainland China and Hong Kong, 2004, Ashgate, London (Chinese editions published both in Hong Kong and Mainland China)

Title

Connectivity of intercity transportation in China: A multi-modal and network approach.

Abstract:

The OBOR initiative involves heavy investment and planning in transportation infrastructure including rail, ports, and airports, with an aim to build better connections between China and the rest of the world. Many Chinese cities are embracing this idea and seizing the opportunity to redesign their long-term planning and investment strategies. It is important to first assess the accessibility and connectivity of the existing transportation network. This paper proposes a model to measure the connectivity of intercity passenger transportation of major cities in China. We consider both quality and quantity of the connections of two transport modes, air and rail. Among the 23 cities selected, Shanghai is revealed to have the highest connectivity level, leading in both air and rail connectivity. Hong Kong, Kunming, and Urumqi are the three major cities that predominantly rely on air transportation whose contribution to the connectivity exceeds 80%. This research also suggests that the connections between the international cities and China’s domestic network are highly concentrated on a few cities, namely, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou, and that Seoul is the best connected international city in terms of its transportation links with China. Shanghai-Nanjing has been found to be the best-connected city pair, and our study shows that train connections have made considerable contributions to the route connectivity. While Beijing-Shanghai is the best-connected pair by air, Shanghai-Nanjing is the best-connected pair by train. More generally, the contribution from train services is more than 80% for 19 of the 20 top-ranking routes. Our analysis shows that the high-speed rail has become a preferred and dominant option over air for routes up to 1300km. This finding has significant policy implications for transportation infrastructure planning and investment.

 

---

Ruud H. Teunter

Professor

Editor of the European Journal of Operational Research

Member of University of Groningen Scientific Committee

Member of the Program Committee of the Top Sector Logistics (TKI Dinalog)

Chair OR – Head of Department, Department of Operations

University of Groningen, Dutch

Title

Inventory control: how to deal with Information Uncertainty

Abstract:

The inventory control literature generally assumes that there is complete information on the demand distribution, that is, all its parameters are known. In practical applications, those parameters have to be estimated based on the demand history (and other indicators), and these estimates are then simply substituted for the actual, unknown parameters. This is done in textbooks and inventory control software world-wide. However, it is flawed and can leads to inventory control policies that are far from optimal. We find that traditional approaches can lead to safety stocks that are up to 30 percent too low and service levels that are up to 10 percent below the target. Beyond inventory control, the topic of properly dealing with information uncertainty for logistics decision making has a lot of research potential.

 

---

Xiaowen Fu

Email: xiaowen.fu@sydney.edu.au

Associate Professor in the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies.the University of Sydney.

Dr. Xiaowen Fu is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, the University of Sydney. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia in 2006. He subsequently served as an Assistant Professor, Associate Professor (with tenure) in the department of logistics and maritime studies in the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and as a Senior Lecturer in the University of Sydney Business School, respectively.  His main research area is transport economics which covers issues such as competition policy and government regulation, efficiency benchmarking, transport demand modelling and industrial organization. He has been the principal investigator of 15 research grants, and published more than 40 journal articles to achieve an H-index of 13. He has been the guest editor of 5 journal special issues, and organized more than 5 major international conferences in the capacity of conference chair. He is on the editorial boards of three journals, and is an editor of the journal of Transport Policy, associate editor of the book series “Advances in Airlines Economics” (Emerald) and co-editor of the Vol 7 of the same book series.

Dr. Fu has provided advisory and economic modeling services to organizations such as the Boeing Commercial Aircraft, New Zealand Commerce Commission, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Government of British Columbia in Canada, Australian Competition Tribunal, Hong Kong Civil Aviation Department, Hong Kong Transport and Housing Bureau, Japan Rail (East), and OECD. He is a member of the Air Transport Research Society (ATRS), International Maritime Economists Association (IAME), the World Conference of Transportation Research (WCTR) and the American Economics Association.

Title

Modelling the Potential for Aviation Liberalization in Central Asia - Market analysis and implications for the One-Belt-One-Road initiative

Abstract:

This study analyzes aviation markets in land-locked countries in Central Asia, namely Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. In these countries, there is no close substitute for the air travel mode due to the tyranny of distance. Aviation liberalization can therefore be of special importance to these countries, and is an integral part of the OBOR initiative proposed by the Chinese government. This study uses observed industry panel data spanning from 2007 to 2015 to estimate airline entry patterns in origin-destination markets. Econometric estimates for domestic and international markets are subsequently benchmarked, and route groups are paired by alternative matching algorithms. These investigations allow us to quantify market potential and predict airline route entry in counterfactual scenarios, so that the effects of different liberalization schemes can be simulated. Our empirical results identified substantial market potential in the Central Asia – China aviation market in terms of serviceable routes upon further liberalization. These findings are in sharp contrast to the industry reality that the Central Asia to China market has lagged the developments to other markets such as former Soviet Union states and some Europe countries. Policy and managerial implications are provided as the end of the presentation.

 

---