A case study in transportation network optimization using a microcomputer

This is a report on the modelization and optimization of the transportation and storage network of a company in France. As this work was part of a strategy for introducing more rigorous tools in the management of the company, the models are conceived in order to be as accessible as possible to managers with little background in Operations Research and Informatics. That is why the models are written on a common spreadsheet and optimized by a linear programming package with spreadsheet interface. The implementation of the models is described and the network in its present state as well as some hypothesis for its improvement are evaluated. Throughout, the stress is on methodological and pedagogic considerations.