A Decision Support System for Managing the Transportation Needs of a Large Corporation

Abstract

This paper deals with the development of an on-line computerized system for planning, scheduling, and monitoring the internal and external transportation needs of a large corporation. In a corporation of that magnitude, the internal transportation of materials, components, subassemblies, final products, machines, tools, and people, is a complex operation that constitutes a significant portion of its total expenses. The corporation developed, over time, an internal organization with its own fleet of vehicles for satisfying its transportation needs. Excess demand was covered by leased vehicles.

A computer system was developed for: accumulating and forecasting user demand for trips; scheduling trip requests to depots and vehicles; serially combining trip requests; shifting excess demand to leased vehicles; deciding on locations from which vehicles should be leased; balancing the load among transportation units; and performing the follow-up, billing, and control on the actual operations.

The system accumulates user demand and actual performance data which is later used for statistical analysis and for driving models which support decisions such as fleet sizing, depot location, leasing contract negotiations, pricing policies, manpower planning and monitoring, and vehicle maintenance policies.

The paper describes: the computerized system, the reasons for its development; the basic processes which are part of the system; the heuristics and algorithms used by the system; an efficient method for mapping and computing interlocation distances; an overview of the Data Base Management System, which supports the system; and important aspects of the computer implementation. The system had a major impact on the corporation, generating significant short and long term benefits, and having a direct influence on the development of other systems by the data processing organization. These are discussed and presented with a summary of the major observations and lessons learned from the project.