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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Scalable Deployment of Efficient Transportation Optimization for SMEs and Public Sector

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description

Transportation planning is central activity in logistic network design. In this study, we examine the deployment of optimization methodology to transportation planning. More specifically, we examine the adoption of system solving the well-known combinatorial optimization problem, the vehicle routing problem (VRP). Its application has resulted in efficiency gains in transportation logistics, but they have not been very widespread, and especially small-scale operators have not yet benefited from these systems. In this paper, we present a prospective case study on the issues during deployment of optimization, especially in the context of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). We propose a novel perspective to analyzing vehicle routing systems (VRSs), and complement the previous research on real-life aspects of commercial routing. In this study, we suggest a framework for analyzing VRS deployment, from a viewpoint frequently identified in enterprise architecture (EA) theory. To our knowledge, EA theory has not been applied to study the requirements of VRP solution methods. This new viewpoint allows us to identify new needs for widespread adoption of vehicle routing systems, and to derive additional requirements for the optimization methodology for SMEs. In practice, we identify several adoption barriers for VRSs and suggest potential strategies for lowering them.