Operative transportation planning in consumer goods supply chains

Transportation management in today’s consumer goods industry can be characterized by a high proportion of outsourced transportation services. Due to rising freight costs consumer goods manufacturers are looking for opportunities to increase the efficiency of their transportation network. This study presents an operational transportation planning problem typical of the consumer goods industry focusing on a network of suppliers, production facilities and warehousing locations. It comprises an analysis of freight costs in a consumer goods transportation network based on the freight rate structures. In this analysis a number of opportunities for efficiency gains are identified and consolidated in an operative transportation planning problem which is then numerically investigated. Furthermore, an overview of processes and organizational structures in transportation management is given with special focus on the integration of existing commercial Transportation Management Systems (TMS).     

Strategies for improving a long-established terminal’s performance: a simulation study of a Turkish container terminal

Due to a long-lasting increase in global trade, only interrupted by the late-2000s economic crisis, container traffic has grown dramatically. As a result, new terminals have opened and existing terminals face much higher container handling than before. In order to meet these challenges, one of the biggest container terminals in Turkey has begun to reconsider its terminal operations and to achieve improvements of its overall logistics performance. Because the factors impacting the terminal’s performance are highly interrelated, a simulation model was developed to analyze the terminal operations, to identify potential bottleneck resources and to highlight directions for the future development of the configuration and the operational control system. For a long-established terminal like the one considered in this study the options for improving the overall performance are limited by the geographical dimensions and by the existing terminal equipment. By use of the simulation model the terminal operations are evaluated under different workload scenarios and alternative configurations are tested in order to support strategic decisions on the terminal’s development.