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Logistics Network Design With Supplier Consolidation Hubs And Multiple Shipment Options, Michelle L. F. Cheong, Rohit Bhatnagar, Stephen C. Graves

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

An important service provided by third-party logistics (3PL) firms is to manage the inbound logistics of raw materials and components from multiple suppliers to several manufacturing plants. A key challenge for these 3PL firms is to determine how to coordinate and consolidate the transportation flow, so as to get the best overall logistics performance. One tactic is to establish consolidation hubs that collect shipments from several suppliers, consolidate these shipments, and direct the consolidated shipments to the appropriate manufacturing plant. We consider the network design problem to implement this tactic, namely deciding the number, location and operation of consolidation hubs …