The planning of material transport is an essential element of Supply Chain Management. By linking transport connections across different facilities, the material source (production plant) is connected with the material sink (customer).

The general supply task can be formulated as follows (cf. Gudehus): For given material flows or shipments, choose the optimal (in terms of minimal costs) distribution and transportation chain from the set of possible logistics chains, which asserts the compliance of delivery times and further constraints. The main goal of the inventory management is the optimal determination of order quantities in terms of minimization of fixed and variable costs subject to resource constraints, supply availability and service level requirements. Similarly, the problem of lot sizing in production considers the determination of the optimal amount of products to be produced in a time slot.

The course includes an introduction to basic terms and definitions of Supply Chain Management and a presentation of fundamental quantitative planning models for distribution, vehicle routing, inventory management and lot sizing. Furthermore, case studies from practice will be discussed in detail.

• Domschke: Logistik: Transporte, 5. Auflage, Oldbourg, 2005
• Domschke: Logistik: Rundreisen und Touren, 4. Auflage, Oldenbourg, 1997
• Ghiani, Laporte, Musmanno: Introduction to Logistics Systems Planning and Control, Wiley, 2004
• Gudehus: Logistik, 3. Auflage, Springer, 2005
• Simchi-Levi, Kaminsky, Simchi-Levi: Designing and Managing the Supply Chain, 3rd edition, McGraw-Hill, 2008
• Silver, Pyke, Peterson: Inventory management and production planning and scheduling, 3rd edition, Wiley, 1998