Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year (2017-2018 to 2018-2019).

Cost and environmentally-efficient fast, reliable, on-time delivery of goods to firms, institutions, and privatex000D
citizens, is the yardstick by which success, prosperity, and growth, is measured or failure, stagnation andx000D
decline down to bankruptcy, is experienced by the firms involved. Fierce competition and increasing pressurex000D
from customers and governments alike for greener and less energy-hungry activities further increases the stressx000D
on the transportation/distribution industry. New concepts, based on collaboration and resource sharing, appearx000D
promising but raise significant challenges in terms of, e.g., business models and intelligent decision-supportx000D
methods. This project is the first stage of a major effort aiming to address these challenges. ClearDestination isx000D
an innovative, well-established, and successful company within the home-delivery industry. It currentlyx000D
develops an innovative business model for the long-distance market, which requires equally innovativex000D
planning methods. Significant time-dependent uncertainty in supply and demand characterizes the problem andx000D
makes it very difficult to address. We bring internationally-acknowledged experience and expertise in keyx000D
aspects of the project: advanced models and methods for the design and planning of multimodal transportationx000D
and logistics systems, deterministic and stochastic combinatorial optimization, including network design andx000D
vehicle routing, and technology transfer. The problem identified for this first project targets the corridor setting,x000D
i.e., the case of two cities linked by a multimodal network of carrier services. The goal is to define andx000D
characterize the planning problems in this setting, develop the operations research models and solutionx000D
methods to address them, analyze their behaviour under various industrial settings, and transfer this newx000D
technology for a first deployment. The results of the project will provide the means for ClearDestination tox000D
consolidate its market share and improve profitability. It will also yield a triple-win situation, to suppliersx000D
(additional revenue), shippers (decreased delivery costs), and the society would benefit from less vehicles onx000D
the road and less pollution due to consolidation of different shipments in the same vehicles.