Modeling and optimizing transportation decisions in a manufacturing supply chain

We describe a transportation problem we studied at the trucking division of a textile manufacturer that owns and operates a large number of manufacturing facilities in all stages of the manufacturing supply chain. The problem involves scheduling of pickup and delivery of daily inventory movement between plants. We develop integer programming models that are based on the current workflow of the schedulers and that capture and optimize crucial aspects of the problem. We validate the models and demonstrate their use with actual data. The results suggest that an effective computerized decision-support system can be built around these models.