Potentials for Efficiency Increase in Modern Freight Forwarding

Thecentralfocusofthisbookconsistsintheinclusionofnewimportant aspects of practical relevance, such as di?erent subcontraction pos- bilities and cooperative planning approaches to the operational tra- portation planning in the commercial road haulage. The book presents the concepts, models and algorithms for the e?ciency increase in the operational transportation planning that include the subcontracti- and collaborative planning concepts developed far beyond the state of the art. The derivation and application of these concepts results in the extension of the intensively investigated problems of vehicle routing and scheduling to the integrated operational transportation planning problem with several subcontraction forms and collaborative request execution. Even if the additional aspect of collaboration (which is itself of high complexity) is not considered, the full complexity of the operational transportation planning still remains insu?ciently investigated in the scienti?cliterature. Theauthorpresentsaninnovativeapproachincl- ing simultaneously several subcontraction forms, which - although of high practical importance - has not yet been discussed in literature. There exists no optimization software, not to mention a comprehensive Decision Support System, for the extended problem solved thousand fold daily in freight forwarding companies. On the basis of a real-life analysis an algorithm is developed by the author in order to solve this highly complex combinatorial optimization problem. The usage of the tabu search method seems reasonable. It allows adapting the latest methodical cognitions to the presented algorithm. Test series for the cost parameter variation of the di?erent transportation modes show promising results and recommendations for the aimed mix between self-ful?llment and subcontraction.