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There has been little conceptual work that comprehensively examines the changing role of the corporate transportation function in the modern business environment. Successful managers today require a broad view of transportation management’s role and responsibilities in an integrated supply chain. This paper clarifies the major transportation decision areas and introduces a framework that positions corporate transportation management within the overall integrated supply chain environment. The framework portrays initial transportation decisions as strategic, long‐term decisions that focus on the overall supply chain transportation system. Once decisions are understood at this level, the decision‐making scope becomes increasingly tactical in nature, focusing on operations that implement the overall system decisions.

An integrated model for distribution network design is proposed which explicitly represents the required level of customer service.

This paper addresses horizontal supply chain collaboration among autonomous freight carriers in the less-than-truckload industry. The main purpose of the paper is to identify and explain the challenges with joint operational decision-making in this context and investigate the precise role of information technology (IT) therein.

Empirical evidence is gathered by means of exploratory and explanatory case research, with multiple cases at the planning departments of European freight carriers operating in collaborative transportation networks.

Collaborating carriers face fundamental challenges in joint operational planning and control of collaborative transportation, despite the broad availability of state-of-the-art IT. These operational supply chain challenges can be explained by technological differences of the available IT applications, which hinder integration.

Any expectations with regard to state-of-the-art XML or EDI-based IT integration for improved joint operational decision-making in collaborative transportation networks should be considered with care. In particular, the authors' research findings may encourage practitioners to consider new planning and control procedures and develop dedicated IT applications for collaborating freight carriers.

The paper highlights the importance of horizontal supply chain collaboration for small and medium-sized freight carriers in the less-than-truckload industry and conceptualises how collaborative transportation networks are organised. Furthermore, an IT typology is introduced to explain the challenges with joint operational decision-making.

The purpose of this paper is to categorize transportation choice research (mode choice and carrier selection) leading to insight on themes in the literature and directions for future research

The proposed transportation choice research categorization framework is based on a comprehensive literature review of the peer‐reviewed journal papers published over the past 20 years, supplemented with a review of practitioner articles to identify current challenges in the logistics field. The academic papers are analyzed in terms of research purpose/question, methodology, findings, and challenges addressed.

The review reveals that several important themes are under‐represented in the transportation choice literature: environmental and energy use concerns; security in the supply chain; supply chain integration; international growth; and the role of the internet and emerging information technologies. This review also found that simulation, case study, and interview methodologies are under‐represented, and that normative modeling research is only lightly represented in this research.

The contributions of this research are three‐fold: the development of a classification scheme for transportation choice research, a structured review that provides a guide to earlier research on the subject of transportation choice, and the identification of research issues for future investigation.

Vehicle allocation problems (VAPs), which are frequently confronted in many transportation activities, primarily including but not limited to full truckload freight transportation operations, induce a significant economic impact. Despite the increasing academic attention to the field, literature still fails to match the needs of and opportunities in the growing industrial practices. In particular, the literature can grow upon the ideas on sustainability, Industry 4.0 and collaboration, which shape future practices not only in logistics but also in many other industries. This review has the potential to enhance and accelerate the development of relevant literature that matches the challenges confronted in industrial problems. Furthermore, this review can help to explore the existing methods, algorithms and techniques employed to address this problem, reveal directions and generate inspiration for potential improvements.

This study provides a literature review on VAPs, focusing on quantitative models that incorporate any of the following emerging logistics trends: sustainability, Industry 4.0 and logistics collaboration.

In the literature, sustainability interactions have been limited to environmental externalities (mostly reducing operational-level emissions) and economic considerations; however, emissions generated throughout the supply chain, other environmental externalities such as waste and product deterioration, or the level of stakeholder engagement, etc., are to be monitored in order to achieve overall climate-neutral services to the society. Moreover, even though there are many types of collaboration (such as co-opetition and vertical collaboration) and Industry 4.0 opportunities (such as sharing information and comanaging distribution operations) that could improve vehicle allocation operations, these topics have not yet received sufficient attention from researchers.

The scientific contribution of this study is twofold: (1) This study analyses decision models of each reviewed article in terms of decision variable, constraint and assumption sets, objectives, modeling and solving approaches, the contribution of the article and the way that any of sustainability, Industry 4.0 and collaboration aspects are incorporated into the model. (2) The authors provide a discussion on the gaps in the related literature, particularly focusing on practical opportunities and serving climate-neutrality targets, carried out under four main streams: logistics collaboration possibilities, supply chain risks, smart solutions and various other potential practices. As a result, the review provides several gaps in the literature and/or potential research ideas that can improve the literature and may provide positive industrial impacts, particularly on how logistics collaboration may be further engaged, which supply chain risks are to be incorporated into decision models, and how smart solutions can be employed to cope with uncertainty and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of operations.

The environmental impacts of transportation are rarely brought into decision making frameworks. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a framework and tool to help in these organizational decisions.

A survey analysis was carried out amongst waste‐management companies within the project ETIENNE. Using this information, drivers and hurdles to the environmentally motivated optimization of transport were identified.

This research framework presents results of perceived hurdles in transport process optimization. Results of the research are grounded with definitions and discussion of the relevance of logistic processes.

Analysis provided in this paper shows that there is no practicable tool to consider environmental impacts in management decisions in transportation. Therefore, a software tool, the so‐called ETIENNE‐Tool, for the evaluation of transportation alternatives, is developed. Theoretical principles for the environmental evaluation of transport processes are also proposed.

Organizational tasks – such as the selection and planning of transportation relations; employment of means of transportation; planning of locations; finally performing of operative business – can be fulfilled in a more environmentally sound manner.

Based on the ETIENNE‐Tool and taking into consideration stakeholders' requirements, different transportation chains for one transportation task can be easily compared and transportation can be planned efficiently.

The motivation behind this research refers to the significant role of integration of production-distribution plans in effective performance of supply chain networks under fierce competition of today’s global marketplace. In this regard, this paper aims to deal with an integrated production-distribution planning problem in deterministic, multi-product and multi-echelon supply chain network. The bi-objective mixed-integer linear programming model is constructed to minimize not only the total transportation costs but also the total delivery time of supply chain, subject to satisfying retailer demands and capacity constraints where quantity discount on transportation costs, fixed cost associated with transportation vehicles usage and routing decisions have been included in the model.

As the proposed mathematical model is NP-hard and that finding an optimum solution in polynomial time is not reasonable, two multi-objective meta-heuristic algorithms, namely, non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGAII) and multi-objective imperialist competitive algorithm (MOICA) are designed to obtain near optimal solutions for real-sized problems in reasonable computational times. The Taguchi method is then used to adjust the parameters of the developed algorithms. Finally, the applicability of the proposed model and the performance of the solution methodologies in comparison with each other are demonstrated for a set of randomly generated problem instances.

The practicality and applicability of the proposed model and the efficiency and efficacy of the developed solution methodologies were illustrated through a set of randomly generated real-sized problem instances. Result. In terms of two measures, the objective function value and the computational time were required to get solutions.

The main contribution of the present work was addressing an integrated production-distribution planning problem in a broader view, by proposing a closer to reality mathematical formulation which considers some real-world constraints simultaneously and accompanied by efficient multi-objective meta-heuristic algorithms to provide effective solutions for practical problem sizes.

The purpose of this paper is to propose that transportation modal mix in global supply chains is a result of the strategic alignment between industry characteristics and supply chain strategies.

Using annual US trade statistics and manufacturing industry data for the years 2002-2009 between the USA and its top 12 Asian trading partners, this study applies various regression methods to examine key factors associated with the transport modal decision.

The results show that industry characteristics have an impact on the transportation modal mix in global supply chains. Manufacturing industries use more air freight and less ocean freight when facing positive sales surprises, high-monthly demand variation, a high-contribution margin ratio, a high cost of capital, and increased competition.

The findings provide important insights for logistics managers and freight forwarders. While transportation cost remains an important concern, a logistics manager must also consider non-cost factors such as competition, working capital, and demand uncertainties in their modal decisions. Freight forwarders should be supply chain solution providers who consider all of these industry factors and suggest a proper mix of transportation modes for their customers.

This study is among the first efforts to examine the impact of industry characteristics on the transportation modal mix in global supply chains. This study first develops a theoretical framework for the modal choice decision for international transportation movements and then, using an extensive and innovative data set, provides new findings regarding current air freight practices in global supply chains.