Distribution Problems

Abstract

The provision of goods or services from a set of supply points to a set of demand points is of great economic and social importance. For example; raw materials need to be supplied from various sources to sites of manufacturing; finished goods are transported from factory to depots or supplied direct to customers; children are transported to and from school by bus; customer orders and enquiries ‘travel with’ a commercial traveller from actual and potential customers back to the traveller’s base; fire engines travel from fire stations to the scene of fires, etc. Clearly the question of an efficient distribution system is closely tied to locational decisions (siting of factories, warehouses, emergency facilities, etc.). In this chapter the locations of facilities within a transportation system will be assumed to be fixed and given, and the routing decisions needed to provide an efficient distribution system will be explored.