William Wilson - Thesis Committee

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Browsing William Wilson - Thesis Committee by browse.metadata.program "Transportation and Logistics"

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    Game Theory Approach to the Vertical Relationships for U.S. Containerized Imports
    (North Dakota State University, 2013) Liu, Qing
    Multi-player interactions and vertical relationships in the U.S. containerized-import shipment market are investigated using game theory approaches. Bi-level programming problems (BLPP) are built to capture the hierarchy structure of the container shipping industry, whereas the ocean carriers (OC) are considered as the market leader. For a case study with five players from several levels of the shipment chain, 16 BLPPs are built to analyze the 32 coalition possibilities. Two routes are compared: The West Coast route (WCR) includes one terminal (P1) and one railroad (R); the East Coast route (ECR) includes a second terminal (P2) and the Panama Canal (PC). The impact of Panama Canal expansion is investigated by comparing scenarios with different assumptions of vessel size. Capacity constraints at port terminals are also analyzed by assuming different capacity levels. The grand coalition of the five players is found to be very unstable because of the unavoidable competition within the coalition; hence, following games are further created, supposing the grand coalition could not form. Model results indicate the OC prefers to form an East Coast Coalition (ECC) with East Coast players if the grand coalition could not form. Sensitivity analyses on some parameter values for the grand coalition and for the ECC bring some interesting findings. With higher cargo values, the WCR becomes more appealing because of its quicker delivery time and lower inventory costs compared with the ECR. The Panama Canal expansion will improve market power and profit shares for the East Coast players if the canal operator could increase its competitive price more than the increase of costs. Generally, a player will gain more market power if its cost could be reduced. A player's upper bound rate is a reflection of its relative market power. But in a complicated market characterized with various cooperation-competition strategies and an ambiguous definition of partners and competitors, the impact of a player's upper bound rate on the market power structure could not be easily explained. For future research, the challenge mainly lies on the large number of BLPPs that need to be constructed and solved in order to study more players.
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    Structural Changes in North American Fertilizer Logistics
    (North Dakota State University, 2014) Shakya, Sumadhur
    Nitrogen-based fertilizer industry in United States is undergoing major changes the demand for which is primarily driven by agriculture. Traditionally, this industry sources anhydrous ammonia through imports from Canada and U.S.-Gulf, the latter comprises bulk of imports, or produces domestically to be supplied as is or converted into urea or UAN variations of nitrogen-based fertilizer with various combinations with other minerals. With change in composition of crops and increasing acreage of crops that are fertilizer intensive, there is an increased demand for nitrogen-based fertilizer in order to promote foliar growth as a standalone form, for example Urea, or in combination, for example Di-ammonium phosphate (DAP). Second compelling reason for change in industry is reduction in prices of natural-gas, in part due to oil exploration, that makes it cheaper to produce anhydrous ammonia domestically. Anhydrous ammonia is perquisite for making other types of nitrogen-based fertilizer and highly energy intensive. Thus, lower natural-gas prices provide incentive for domestic firms to either expand existing fertilizer plants or opens up the possibility of new entrants. Many companies/firms have recently announced their plans to expand existing plants or open new units, exerting competitive pressure on an industry that already has lot of surplus capacity but highly competitive in terms of production costs and technology used. It is to be noted that natural-gas prices are volatile; therefore, any commitment to expand or open new plant is subject to volatility in demand, natural-gas prices, and import price of fertilizers. The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze spatial competition among U.S. nitrogen-based fertilizer plants and their respective market boundaries. This dissertation also derives the structure of the supply chain for nitrogen-based fertilizer in the United States (at macro level); and the stochastic spatial-optimization model to account for risk in random variables. Locational information is used to account for spatial nature of problem, and linear and mixed-integer based optimization techniques are applied to arrive at current and most likely future cases. Combination of linear optimization, and mixed-integer, and geographical information systems helps in determining regional areas where competition is expected to be ruinous and most intense; and provide insights on viability of newly announced fertilizer plants that are most likely to be successful and significantly impact the structure of overall supply chain.