Real-time management of transportation disruptions in forestry

In this paper, we present a mathematical programming model based on a time-space network representation for solving real-time transportation problems in forestry. We cover a wide range of unforeseen events that may disrupt the planned transportation operations (e.g., delays, changes in the demand and changes in the topology of the transportation network). Although each of these events has different impacts on the initial transportation plan, one key characteristic of the proposed model is that it remains valid for dealing with all the unforeseen events, regardless of their nature. Indeed, the impacts of such events are reflected in a time-space network and in the input parameters rather than in the model itself. The empirical evaluation of the proposed approach is based on data provided by Canadian forestry companies and tested under generated disruption scenarios. The test sets have been successfully solved to optimality in short computational times and demonstrate the potential improvement of transportation operations incurred by this approach.