Optimizing Fulfillment and Transportation of Shoring Materials: An Integer Programming Approach

We study an optimization problem faced by a construction material leasing company that aims to optimize the transportation of shoring materials between warehouses and customers within a given planning period. In addition to providing forward transportation from the warehouse to the customer and backward transportation from the customer to the warehouse, the company allows for transferring some shoring materials from one customer who has completed their rental to another. Unlike traditional logistics planning, shoring materials such as shore posts and steel beams usually have irregular shapes, making loading decisions significantly more complex. To tackle this challenge, we propose a modular system to facilitate loading shoring materials on trucks. The modular system resorts to a collection of loading patterns associated with high vehicle capacity utilization from the company’s historical operating data. By incorporating these candidate loading patterns, we develop an integer linear programming formulation that integrates forward, backward, and transfer transportation, enabling us to obtain a cost-efficient transportation solution. A case study using realistic data is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of our solution approach.