Modern Technology for Transportation Optimization

This is the second in a series of textbooks from MercuryGate International Inc., a transportation management software company based in North Carolina, about the business of providing logistics and transportation management services. The focus of this book is optimization -- the systematic design of loads and routes for freight movements that achieves an improved result. The goals of optimization can be to reduce costs or to achieve better efficiency in carrier, load or network utilization. Optimization can deliver impressive results, yet even in today’s competitive environment its practice is not universal. This textbook lays out the use of software optimization tools, which quickly out-perform human planners as shipment volumes and the number of “constraints” begin to increase. A “constraint” is a condition that limits the way in which planners can build and execute loads, such as time windows, facility limits, carrier capacity and freight incompatibility. The textbook explores how to take these and many other categories of constraints into consideration during optimization. The textbook uses as its model a software optimization tool named “Mojo”, a product of MercuryGate International. However, the concepts and theory of optimization presented here, and the litany of factors and constraints that can and should be considered in optimization, are useful material for supply-chain students and professionals everywhere.