The Military Theater Distribution Network Design Problem

We formulate and test a mathematical program to select Air and Sea Ports of Debarkation and intermediate logistical distribution centers, through which we route military supplies over a directed transportation network to meet aggregated weekly demands by military units conducting a steady state contingency operation. The multi-objective model seeks to minimize a weighted combination of the total risk encountered by transported supplies, the total distance traveled by supplies, and the maximum per capita workload supported by transportation assets at a given echelon (i.e., port-to-distribution center versus distribution center to demands). Within our formulation, we account for capacities on arc follows and node throughputs, with the latter enabling the representation of material handling equipment limitations at the ports and distribution centers. For our model, we develop and test an Excel-based decision support tool that invokes the commercial solver CPLEX (Version 12.5) to solve the underlying mixed-integer linear program, and we demonstrate its efficacy on a representative instance. For this instance, we identify extreme points and selected interior solutions on the Pareto efficient frontier and examine the model's sensitivity to selected parameters. We conclude by discussing how the model can account for intra-theater airlift and outline modifications that can account for expected pilferage losses within the distribution system. The original document contains color images.