Road Express Hub-and-Spoke Network Design

Road express develops fast in recent years. At the same time, road express companies are experiencing a more and more fierce competition. And it is very important for road express companies to reduce transport cost and increase competitiveness. As we know, a good transport network is critical for a road express company to reduce cost. So, to design a good and effective transport network is very important for a road express company to reduce cost and increase benefit.Hub-and-spoke network is an effective transport network to integrate logistics resources and reduce logistics cost. Since the freight of road express is highly time-definite and its source is uncertain, so hub-and-spoke network is very suitable for road express companies. Hub-and-spoke network is divided to two categories. One is Single-hub assigned hub-and-spoke network. The other is Multi-hub assigned hub-and-spoke network. A detailed discussion of these two kinds of hub-and-spoke network is given in this thesis.In these kinds of hub-and-spoke networks, all the freights must be transported to hub and redirected. So these kinds of hub-and-spoke networks can be called pure hub-and-spoke network. The virtue of pure hub-and-spoke network is focusing freight. But its disadvantage is also very clear, that is all the freights must be through at least one hub, even though two terminals are very close. So if introduce direct routes in some terminals in a pure hub-and-spoke network, it is possible to reduce transport cost. And we call it hybrid hub-and-spoke network.Then the thesis takes Shandong Road Express Co. Ltd as the example, replaces its existing pure hub-and-spoke network and designs a new hybrid hub-and-spoke network. The aim is reducing transport network cost by introducing this new hybrid hub-and-spoke network. For this objective, firstly an analysis of freight transport process is given. Based this analysis, a calculation of cost in terminal, cost in hub and transportation cost is given for preparation of calculation of total network cost. Then an introduction of Genetic Algorithm is given since GA is the basic algorithm of the hub-and-spoke network designing simulation program.Then in the last chapter of the thesis, a hybrid hub-and-spoke network designing simulation program is given. This simulation program is based on genetic algorithms, and introduces several direct routes to the existing pure hub-and-spoke network of Shandong Road Express Co. Ltd. The results of the simulation program show that, by introducing directs routes in some terminals, some terminals reduce the type of the trailers to hub, some terminals reduce the number of trailers. So hybrid hub-and-spoke network is an effective network to reduce cost, this hybrid hub-and-spoke network is suitable to Shandong Road Express Co. Ltd.The innovations of this thesis are, firstly, a new hybrid hub-and-spoke network is introduced in this thesis. Secondly, genetic algorithm is introduced in the designing of this new hybrid hub-and-spoke network. Thirdly, prepare a hybrid hub-and-spoke network designing simulation program using Java in this thesis, and prove the effectiveness of this new hybrid hub-and-spoke network by simulation.