A Decision Support System for an Optimal Transportation Network Planning in the Third Party Logistics

Abstract

In an effort to gain competitiveness, recently many companies are trying to outsource their logistics activities to the logistics specialists, while concentrating on their core and strategic business area. Because of this trend, the third party logistics comes to the fore, catching people´s attention, and expanding its market rapidly. Under these circumstances, the third party logistics companies are making every effort to improve their logistics services and to develop an information system in order to enhance their competitiveness. In particular, among these efforts one of the critical parts is the decision support system for effective transportation network planning. To this end, this study has developed an efficient decision support system for an optimal transportation network planning by comprehensively considering the transportation mode, routing, assignment, and schedule. As a result of this study, the new system enables the expansion of the third party logistics companies´ services including the multimodal transportation, not to mention one mode of transportation, and also gets them ready to plan an international transportation network.