Quantifying the Effect of Flexibility and Information Sharing in Transportation Planning

In this paper, we analyze the effect of information sharing between a wholesaler and a transport company in the Norwegian grocery supply chain. The planning process of each company is formulated as a set covering problem, where the input data of the transport company depends on the optimal solution of the wholesaler model. Information sharing is modeled through controlling which information from the wholesaler model is sent to the transport company model. We define three different cases of information sharing and introduce two types of flexibility, namely the abilities to deviate from the planned delivery date and selected routes. We use real-world data to calculate the effect of information sharing for the different cases. Our results indicate that the benefits from information sharing are limited if there is no flexibility in the system.