Optimization Research Of Air Express Backbone Network Based On Scale Economies

With the simultaneous development of express enterprises and air cargo enterprises, the express enterprises in China are gradually extending their scope of business to air express. Because of human and financial constraints, few express enterprises can rent or purchase aircraft to establish their own air express enterprises and most of them still hire cabin belly from airlines. Currently, most air express branches act in their own way and operate dependently in their business. In the specific network operation, it exists the following problems:high transportation cost, less cooperation among branches, arbitrariness and lack of standardization in the network operation and delayed delivery. Air express network is considered as the lifeblood of express enterprises and can influence the service level directly. Therefore, air express network optimization is of high importance to express companies to develop air express.The research object is the backbone network formed by branches and this article studies the problem of air express backbone network optimization. The paper starts from the literature review of express enterprise network optimization and air express network both in China and abroad. Meanwhile, we analyses the operating status of air express network and describe the problems in the operation of air express backbone network based on the development status of express enterprise and air express network. Then we refer to the character of hub-and-spoke network that the hub arc can obtain scale economics, we establish air express backbone network optimization model based on scale economics. The model considers transportation costs, delivery time, the number of flights, the flight interval and transit costs between nodes. We also use greedy algorithm and examples to verify the feasibility of express enterprise network optimization. Based on the existing network flows, the paper optimizes express paths and redesigns the routes that can reduce transit cost by changing the transport mode from point to point to the combination mode of direct traffic and transition. This article is aimed to reduce the cost and improve the timeliness of the air express.In addition, there are11figures and7tables in the dissertation. And50documents are referred to.