Route Selection and Consolidation in International Intermodal Freight Transportation

Abstract

This chapter focuses on selecting the route in international intermodal freight transportation network considering the following characteristics, first and foremost multi-objective: minimization of travel time and travel cost, later schedules and delivery times of every service provider in each pair of location, and lastly variable cost must be included in every location. The study aims to formulate the problem into mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model and develop an algorithm which encompassing all the above essential characteristics. It is NP-hard problem; it follows the proposed algorithm (nested partitions method) that is heuristic and multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) method. An illustrative experiment is considered and our proposed algorithm is applied to obtain an effective and efficient solution.