Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Logistics is concerned with the efficient flow of products from their points of production to their points of consumption. It encompasses several inter-related activities such as demand forecasting, inventory control, transportation and warehousing. Transportation, the most visible of these activities, is also the most important one in terms of costs: numerous studies have reported that transportation often accounts for more than 40% of total distribution costs for products. The aim of this research program is to further the study and development of mathematical models and solution algorithms for three important families of decision problems arising in logistics and transportation: i) facility location and network design, ii) vehicle routing and scheduling, and iii) transportation terminal management. The program will focus on problems of high practical relevance that either have not been studied or cannot be solved efficiently given the current state of the art. In each case, the general objectives of the program are i) to gain a better understanding of the basic structure of the problems studied, ii) to develop appropriate formulations of these problems, and iii) to design efficient algorithms capable of solving large-scale instances within short computing times. A distinguishing aspect of the program is its focus on incorporating uncertainty within decision models and on integrating problems that have traditionally been studied individually in spite of their interactions. The general methodology used in this work is that of operations research. Because of their large size, most problems are solved either by mathematical decomposition (e.g., Benders decomposition, column generation), by cutting-plane methods or by meta-heuristics (e.g., iterated local search, large neighbourhood search). The research program is motivated by real-life applications arising in both manufacturing and service industries. In addition to advancing scientific knowledge, it will benefit the Canadian economy by stimulating the development of decision-support tools that can be used by manufacturers, distributors, retailers and transportation companies.