The application of linear programming by the General Electric Company to efficiently allocate routes to trucking companies

The appliance and lighting group of the General Electric (GE) Company allocates its shipping truckload to 17 different trucking companies over 701 different routes from one of its nine terminals. A sequence of several linear programming models was developed to help the management of the appliance and lighting division develop an optimal allocation. Two user-friendly interfaces were also developed to aid GE management in the use of one of the models. The tool is being used at GE and significant savings (approximately 15.5% of shipping costs) are possible with the optimal truckload allocation solution provided by the model. [Received 8 May 2010; Revised 2 June 2011; Accepted 15 June 2011]