| Transportation services form a major part of a supply chain network. They facilitate movement of materials from one part to another. The trucking network is most widely used modes of transportation. Very few researchers have directly addressed the problem of simulating generic trucking networks particularly long haul trucking networks.; In this research we have designed and developed object-oriented simulation elements for generic transportation networks within a supply chain framework. In order to create the framework, we developed modeling elements such as loads, load generator, dispatcher, network, locations, lanes, trucks, trailers, drivers etc. The transportation elements have been developed using the Java Simulation Library. We have also implemented load generation mechanism, dispatching mechanism, allocation of resources, reallocation of resources, and various driver rules. We have implemented the transportation framework developed for simulating and analyzing truckload transportation scenarios. We can also analyze the average load system time taken, resource utilizations, number and waiting time of loads in queues, number of loads successfully processed, loaded and unloaded miles traveled etc.; Finally, the truckload model was tested on a realistic data from a case study to verify the functioning of the transportation elements and evaluate the model efficiency. We have also validated the results with Petre's (2000) thesis work. |
