Urban goods distribution under environmental contingency in medellín

Abstract

Transportation processes into cities are complex activities that require to consider the profitability and competitive goals of companies, but also external factor that affect their operations, such as city restrictions, infrastructure and even social and environmental aspects, which conditionate the success of companies to supply customers. This chapter presents a case study that involves a goods distribution problem for a Colombian Company under a strong mobility restriction imposed by the local government, due to the high degree of the air pollution in the city of Medellin on March of 2018. The case is aimed to study a goods distribution problem for a real company into a city, in which the company needs to decide how to carry out the transportation process, looking for assure the customer satisfaction but also the company’s profitability. It is expected that after the case analysis, it would be possible to generate alternatives that can help not only the company but also related organization under similar operation conditions.