Simulating transportation practices in multi-indenture multi-echelon (MIME) systems

Military supply chains encompass a complicated network of customers and suppliers, and deal with a wide variety of items. Demand inside the network is generated at the unit level at a specific base. The demand from the bases is aggregated to military service depots, which comprise the wholesale level in the network. The many layers of the supply chain often result in unnecessary cost and delay times, as well as low network reliability. Better integration between the multiple levels of the supply chain may be achieved through the effective utilization of transportation modes and criterion. In this paper, we present a simulation for quantifying the effect of transportation options (i.e. truckload shipping, less-than-truckload shipping, transshipments, and express air shipping) on shipping costs and operational availability.