Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Distribution management encompasses transportation and location activities within organizations. In the manufacturing sector, these include the design and operation of supply chains that control the flow of goods from suppliers to factories, and then to warehouses and distribution centres, and finally to points of sale and customers. In reverse logistics, goods often originate at customer locations and are shipped back to depots or recycling centers. In the transportation sector, the aim is to optimize the flow of goods and passengers through complex networks. It is common to classify distribution management problems according to three broad categories: strategic, tactical and operational. Another classification captures the moment at which the relevant information on the problem data becomes available. In static problems it is assumed all the data are known with certainty at the time of planning. In stochastic problems, some of the data are only known in a probabilistic sense. In dynamic, most of the relevant information is revealed gradually over time, but some stochastic information may also be known a priori and exploited during the solution process. The proposed research program includes five main research areas: 1) Recovery operations in the airline industry; 2) Robust network design; 3) Location problems; 4) Dial-a-ride problems and 5) Freight transportation problems. A central component of the research program is the development of efficient solution methodologies for complex problems arising in distribution management. These include exact algorithms which guarantee optimal solutions, and heuristics which seek to produce very good but not necessarily optimal solutions. This program consists of developing powerful algorithms through the creation of new paradigms, through the improvement and enhancement of existing methods, and through innovative combinations and extensions of known concepts.