Tactical planning of sustainable transportation by logistics service providers for the automotive industry

The paper presents a planning process, a decision support system and an optimization model designed for the tactical planning of transportation by a logistics service provider (LSP) for customers from the automotive industry focusing on the primary target of sustainable transportation. Therefore a rolling to-be planning process has been designed which covers the planning activities for different modes of transportation enabling the planning of shared trains consisting of freight wagons for parts and for finished vehicles by simultaneously taking into account the inbound as well as the outbound activities. A decision support system which allows for the collaborative planning of one LSP and several original equipment manufacturers (OEM) has been designed and implemented to support the future planning process. Main component is a new optimization model which is an extension of the service network design problem using the path formulation. Central features are the consideration of cost and carbon dioxide emission and of multiple freight wagon fleets which is important for the planning of shared trains. Several scenarios have been investigated to show the ecological and economical benefit of process, decision support system and model.