ANALYSIS AND INTEGRATION OF OPTIMIZATION MODELS FOR LOGISTIC SYSTEMS

The authors have developed some optimization models for the minimizati on of transportation and inventory costs on single links of logistic n etworks. Such models provide, for each link, the optimal frequencies a t which trucks should travel and the optimal number of trucks needed f or each frequency when only a discrete set of feasible frequencies is given. For this problem, simple EOQ-based models have been proposed in the literature. However, these models fail to yield feasible solution s, when only a given discrete set of feasible frequencies is available . We show on a set of problem instances that our optimization model ca n provide solutions with costs lower than those obtained from EOQ-base d models. Computational results are presented and discussed. We also s how how models optimizing frequencies on a single link can be integrat ed in order to optimize shipment frequencies for simple networks.