Solving a Freight Transport Problem Using Facility Location Techniques.
01 January 1990
Deciding how to transport freight from various sources to various destinations is an important material logistics problem. Use of consolidation terminals can take advantage of economies of scale in transportation costs. Instead of making many direct shipments, each source can ship in bulk to one or more consolidation terminals. At the terminals, these shipments can be broken down by destination. Material bound for the same destination can then be combined. In this memorandum, we consider a freight transport problem (FTP). Each source provides a different product to each of several destinations. For each source- destination pair, it must be decided whether to ship the product directly or via one of a given set of consolidation terminals.