Transport Planning for Procurement and Distribution

Abstract

Transport processes are essential parts of the supply chain. They perform the flow of materials that connects an enterprise with its suppliers and with its customers. The integrated view of transport, production and inventory holding processes is characteristic of the modern SCM concept. The appropriate structure of a transport system mainly depends on the size of the single shipments: Large shipments can go directly from the source to the destination in full transport units, e.g. as Full Truckload (FTL) or Full Containerload (FCL). Medium sized shipments are consolidated to FTL or FCL shipments in order to increase the efficiency of transportation. A consolidated set of compatible Less-Than Truckload (LTL) or Less-than Containerload (LCL) shipments constitute an aggregate FTL or FCL and will be fulfilled by a single truck or container, respectively on a single combined tour with several pickup and delivery locations. On this combined tour all shippers and receivers of the consolidated shipments are served without any transshipment. Small shipments have to be consolidated in a transport network, where a single shipment is transshipped once or several times