A multi-agent framework for load consolidation in logistics

Logistics companies mainly provide land transportation services facing with difficulties in making effective operational decisions. This is especially the case of making load/capacity/route planning and load consolidation where customer orders are generally unpredictable and subject to sudden changes. Classical modelling and decision support systems are mostly insufficient for providing satisfactory solutions in a reasonable time solving such dynamic problems. Agent-based approaches, especially multi-agent paradigms that can be considered as relatively new members of system science and software engineering, are providing effective mechanisms for modelling dynamic systems generally operating under unpredictable environments and having a high degree of complex interactions. It seems that multi-agent paradigms have big potential for handling complex problems in land transportation logistics. Based on this motivation, the paper proposes a multi-agent based framework for load consolidation problems of third-party logistics companies

Evaluating the basic load consolidation strategies for a transportation company through logistics process modelling and simulation

Land transportation managers face some difficulties especially for operating decisions which are about load/capacity/route planning. Load consolidation is a widely used practice in transportation. Load consolidation is grouping of several small shipments into one container while satisfying logistics system constraints. In this paper, two simple load consolidation approaches, which are known as 'quantity-based consolidation' and 'time and quantity-based consolidation' are evaluated. These approaches are 'non-recurrent', in which the logistics system has a 'target time' or 'target weight' before the accumulation of the orders. Some performance measures for these methods are investigated through a case study. The study is performed in a 3P-logistics company operating from Gaziantep. Due to the complexity of the logistics processes, effects of the load consolidation methods are evaluated via process modelling and simulation. The performance results of load consolidation methods are compared in order to support decisions made by the management of company.load consolidation; land transport; logistics; business process modelling; simulation; Turkey; transportation management; load planning; route planning; capacity planning.

Application of activity-based costing to a land transportation company: A case study

Although there are many studies in the literature that explain modern costing approaches including activity-based costing (ABC), the number of studies that present real life applications is very few. This is especially true for logistics and transportation applications. One of the main difficulties in land transportation companies is to determine and evaluate true cost of their operations and services. If used and implemented properly, ABC can be very helpful for transportation companies to determine cost of their operations with higher correctness. In this paper, an application of ABC to a land transportation company that is located in Turkey is presented in detail. In order to improve the effectiveness of the ABC an integrated approach that combines ABC with business process modeling and analytical hierarchy approach is proposed. It is figured out that the proposed approach is quite effective in costing services of the land transportation company compared to the existing traditional costing system which is in use.Transportation costs Activity-based costing Logistics