Transportation Operations Management provides the analytical tools and
industry-wide context necessary to understand and address the critical
real-world problems in transportation operations and planning that
shippers, carriers, and third-party logistics providers face every day.
The book examines operational problems from all transportation
modes--air, motor carrier, water vessel, pipeline, and rail--to show how
these interact in the real world of today's carriers and shippers. The
book also outlines and analyzes key issues such as designing efficient
domestic and international transportation networks; choosing optimal
locations within market spaces; designing infrastructure to manage
network congestion; leveraging intermodalism for operational
flexibility; leveraging techniques for costing, pricing, and revenue
management; using tracking technology for decisionmaking; maintaining
regulatory compliance in operations; and managing environmental
stewardship. Paying particular attention to the influence of the
logistical constraints of time, physical space, and location, the book
reveals the key role of transportation in strategic and tactical
decision-making. The book uses mathematical techniques such as the
theory of capacity management, the microeconomics of costing and
pricing, risk management, linear optimization, productivity measurement,
queueing theory, and complex scheduling. The book also uses real-world
problems with their actual marketplace constraints in technology,
geography, and government regulations to provide an applied context to
the techniques examined.
