Towards a distributed framework for transportation planning: A food supply chain case study

Distribution and remoteness of production sites of enterprise networks, remoteness and multiplicity of distribution centers, the explosion of e-commerce has led to an increase in the number of requests for transportation around the world. This increase in the volume of transport of goods and cargo added to the growing number of passenger trips has led to an increase in transportation means(cars, planes, boats, etc.), with a consequent increase in the capacity of communication channels, which reached saturation (highways, airlines, shipping lanes), an expansion of storage areas (ports, airports, warehouses, etc.), and an increase in pollution impacting the environment sustainability. In this context, organization, management and transportation planning, become crucial, favored the emergence of many specialized companies (3PL) offering a pooling of transport and centralized management. The objective of this paper is to present a distributed architecture planning of transportation activities aimed at better utilize transport resources by grouping several orders of transport for each effective displacement.