Logistics Network Design and Collaboration

The evolution of logistics networks during the last decades can be characterized by a strong rationalization of business processes. This ongoing rationalization has led to a constant search for economies of scale in logistics networks. A strategy that has become more and more apparent is seeking collaboration with partners in order to achieve the necessary scale and scope. The difficulty when searching for such a partnership in logistics is finding the most appropriate scope, type and form of collaboration. Thus far, the design of a logistics networks in which the different actors collaborate received little attention in the literature. A comprehensive and practical step-by-step methodology is presented that enables the reader to first make a clear problem decomposition, denote the relations between the different actors in the network, and finally based on the specific design characteristics choice the appropriate modeling approach.