Physical internet enabled open hub network design for distributed networked operations

Abstract

Supply networks are still mainly based on organizations essentially centralized, dedicated and thus fragmented, whose sustainability becomes ever more problematic nowadays. The recently introduced Physical Internet tackles this problem by interconnecting all the logistics services through the encapsulation of the goods in smart modular containers. Within this framework, network adaptation with distributed routing problems take the lead over classical network design with flow assignment problems. Thanks to recent progresses made in the Digital Internet domain, decentralized approaches are foreseen to be applied for solving those problems on the large scale mandated by the Physical Internet. This leads us to propose here an evolutionist approach to solve the Physical Internet open hub network design problem. We model the problem, formally introduce the design approach, analyze empirical results and provide conclusion remarks and opportunities for further research. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.