Design and Analysis of Efficient Freight Transportation Networks in a Collaborative Logistics Environment

The increase in total freight volumes, reducing volume per freight unit, and delivery deadlines have increased the burden on freight transportation systems of today. With the evolution of freight demand trends, there also needs to be an evolution in the freight distribution processes. Today\u27s freight transportation processes have a lot of inefficiencies that could be streamlined, thus preventing concerns like increased operational costs, road congestion, and environmental degradation. Collaborative logistics is one of the approaches where supply chain partners collaborate horizontally or/and vertically to create a centralized network that is more efficient and serves towards a common goal or objective. In this dissertation, we study intermodal transportation, and cross-docking, two major pillars of efficient, cheap, and faster freight transportation in a collaborative environment. We design an intermodal network from a centralized network perspective where all the participants intermodal operators, shippers, carriers, and customers strive towards a synchronized and cost-efficient freight network. Also, a cross-dock scheduling problem is presented for competitive shippers using a centralized cross-dock facility. The problem develops a fast heuristic and meta-heuristic approach to solve large-scale real-world problems and draws key insights from a cross-dock operator and inbound carrier\u27s perspectives

Handling disruptions in a network with cross-docking

Cross-docking (CD) is a commonly used technique to consolidate freight for more efficient delivery to customers; CD is continuing to see increased use by companies. Synchronization of inbound and outbound freight is clearly critical to operations and so is having the cross-dock able to support the freight flow with available doors and material handling equipment. The latter is particularly important when there is a disruption in the inbound freight. One delayed truck can impact several outbound trucks. A methodology is proposed to address explicitly both the scheduling of trucks and material handling within the CD. Two models are proposed – one for routing inbound and outbound trucks and the other to schedule the cross-dock. Results from each model when run separately are presented as well as results from when the two models are run iteratively

Research IMTLP under uncertainty

This dataset has been used for a research project titled, A Two-stage Stochastic Model for Intermodal Terminal Location and Freight Distribution under Facility Disruptions , by authors Vishal Badyal, Dr. William Ferrell, Dr. Nathan Huynh, and Bhavya Padmanabhan