Recurrent decision approaches to shipment-release timing in freight consolidation

Discusses ‘recurrent approaches’ to determining when to despatch a consolidated load. Unlike a ‘non-recurrent approach’ (which sets a target time or weight prior to accumulating orders and despatches when the target is reached), recurrent approaches re-evaluate the shipment-release decision several times within an order accumulation cycle. Presents two probabilistic recurrent models, one assuming private transportation and the other common carriage. Compares the performance of these models with the non-recurrent rules of despatching the ‘economic shipment weight’ or, in the case of common carriage, the minimum volume weight. Concludes that with both forms of transportation, the decision heuristic outperforms despatching the economic shipment weight when that weight is close to vehicle capacity. Shows that, with common carriage, the use of the more sophisticated model does not yield better cost results than the minimum volume weight despatch rule. Discusses the reasons for, and implications of, these results.