Khobotnia T. Efficiency Improvement in International Road Freight Transportation

The thesis is devoted to solving the important scientific and practical problem of increasing the efficiency of international road freight transportation through the development, improvement and implementation of models, methods and software for freight transportation management in transport networks with imbalance between the volumes of deliveries and orders of goods. A decision-taking support system for freight transportation management (DTSFTM) in international transport networks has been developed for the first time, which significantly improves the quality of management decisions in finding the optimal freight transportation plan through the use of all existing and improved methods of reducing unbalanced freight to more balanced one. In order to optimize freight transportation in international networks the methodology of using simplex method has been improved. This methodology allows to optimize freight transportation with existing imbalance between the volumes of deliveries and orders of goods as well as takes into account the peculiarity of the case when the supply of goods exceeds its demand. A proportional-difference method of eliminating the imbalance between the volumes of deliveries and orders of goods in transport networks has been further developed, the use of which in some cases contributes to a more efficient freight transportation plan. In the course of research there has been performed modeling of processes of rational organization of freight transportation in transport systems under conditions of unbalanced volumes of freight deliveries and orders, namely: solution of network transport problems with unbalanced volumes of deliveries and orders; use of the theory of network flow problems in electronic spreadsheets to optimize freight traffic; calculation of optimal freight transportation plans with the help of new approaches in the designed software environment.