Designing distribution systems with transport economies of scale

This paper is concerned with some aspects of distribution planning which are rarely addressed in the literature: different types of distribution networks with up to three transport stages and nonlinear transport costs derived from freight tariffs. The importance of these aspects in practice is underlined and a general multi-product distribution planning model is presented. Applications to designing distribution systems in West Germany, Western Europe and recently in the unified Germany in various consumer goods industries are reported and one case is described in detail.