Service Network Design integrated with Bin Packing

Freight transportation is crucial for the global economy, enabling the movement of goods between multiple locations. To address this issue, Operational Research (OR) methodologies, particularly Service Network Design (SND), are employed to optimize carrier services and meet shipper demands. The purpose of the work is to explore SND integrated with Bin Packing constraints. This necessity derives from the scarcity of research conducted on this topic. The first part of the thesis introduces the basic concepts and describes how freight transportation works. In particular, the need to integrate bin packing considerations into the traditional model is emphasized. This section ends with the presentation of the mathematical model for SND integrated with Packing constraints. In the second part, the process of data generation, for the following implementation of the model, is described. For this aim, the procedures used to create consistent data for three type of networks are exposed. In the last section, the model is implemented using the AIMMS software and applied to the instances generated. The work concludes with some final considerations and considers future research directions.