The employment of Operations Research to solve logistics problem in road freight transport

Abstract

Road freight transport is a dynamic, complex and competitive segment that will require quick and accurate decisions from its managers, since the mere fact of making a vehicle available on the road or in the city to meet customer needs does not imply the generation of results positive. Thus, decision-making in this sector should be carefully studied for the survival of the business. The scenario for this study is a fictitious cargo road transport company that, through one of its vehicles, should serve two specific customers. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the employment of Operations Research (OR) as a support in the most complex decision making, based on the Solver resource available in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, aiming to solve a logistics problem and result simulations of a company that provides transport services, based on constraints inherent to the enterprise in which the objective function must find the breakeven point and maximize the result.