TABLE OF CONTENTS Bernhard Fleischmann
University of Augsburg, Department of Production and Logistics, Universit tsstra e 16, 86135 Augsburg, Germany
Transport processes are essential parts of the supply chain. They perform the flow of materials that connects an enterprise with its suppliers and with its customers. The integrated view of transport, production and inventory holding processes is characteristic of the modern SCM concept.
The appropriate structure of a transport system mainly depends on the size of the single shipments: Large shipments can go directly from the source to the destination in full transport units, e. g. trucks or containers. Small shipments have to be consolidated in a transport network, where a single shipment is transshipped once or several times and the transport is broken at transshipment points (TPs). A particularly effective consolidation of small shipments is achieved by a logistics service provider (LSP), who can combine the transports from many senders.
The consolidation of transport flows decreases the transport cost. As the cost of a single trip of a certain vehicle on a certain route is nearly independent of the load, a high utilization of the loading capacity is advantageous. Moreover, the relative cost per loading capacity decreases with increasing size of the vehicles. But even with a strong consolidation of shipments to full loads, e. g. by an LSP, the smaller shipments cause relatively higher cost, because the consolidation requires detours to different loading places, additional stops and transshipment (see Fleischmann (1998, pp. 65)).
The following...
