Shipment Planning: A Case Study for an Apparel Company

Abstract

This study includes the analysis of the shipment planning problem for a large textile company in Turkey. The aim is to develop an effective solution method to the problem and thus reduce the shipping costs associated with internal logistics operations. A formal definition of the problem is made and all the parameters and inputs are clearly explained and determined. An original mixed-integer programming model has been proposed to solve the problem although it is not practical in real-world problems since it requires a very long time to get the optimal solution. Therefore a heuristic method is developed to obtain near-optimal solutions. The performance of the heuristic method has been tested and verified. A simple decision support system with user-friendly interfaces has been developed to implement the heuristic method as a practical shipment planning tool.