文档介绍：Preface
This book grew out a number of distribution and logistics graduate courses we
have taught over the last ten years. In the first few years, the emphasis was on very
basic models such as the traveling salesman problem, and on the seminal papers
of Haimovich and Rinnooy Kan (1985), which analyzed a simple vehicle routing
problem, and Roundy (1985), which introduced power-of-two policies and proved
that they are effective for the one warehouse multi-retailer distribution system. At
that time, few results existed for plex, realistic distribution problems,
stochastic inventory problems or the integration of these issues.
In the last few years however, there has been renewed interest in the area of
logistics among both industry and academia. A number of forces have contributed
to this shift. First, industry has realized the magnitude of savings that can be
achieved by better planning and management plex logistics systems. In-
deed, a striking example is Wal-Mart’s ess story which is partly attributed to
implementing a new logistics strategy, called cross-docking. Second, advances in
information munication technologies together with sophisticated decision
support systems now make it possible to design, implement and control logistics
strategies that reduce system-wide costs and improve service level. These decision
support systems, with their increasingly user-friendly interfaces, are fundamentally
changing the management of logistics systems.
These developments have motivated the munity to aggressively
pursue answers to logistics research questions. Indeed, in the last five years consid-
erable progress has been made in the analysis and solution of logistics problems.
This progress was achieved, in many cases, using an approach whose purpose is
to ascertain characteristics of the problem or of an algorithm that are independent
vi Preface
of the specific problem data. That is, the approach determines characteristics of the
solution or the