The problem considered in this paper is that of determining the order in which customers will be visited by delivery/pick‐up vehicles. Typical examples of this problem are the routing questions faced by the Post Office in making local deliveries, industrial laundry service companies and...

The total systems cost concept of PDM can be made fully operable through a cost behaviour oriented accounting system. Accounting analysis can also promote the profitable use of PD services.

Every company reaches stages in its affairs when it has to organise itself differently. We at Wander have reached this point in many areas, particularly over the last three years, but none of these is more important than physical distribution. We re‐organised this function under the total...

This article describes a new and simple method for determining how much road transport capacity should be company‐owned, and how much should be hired from outside on a day‐to‐day basis. The emphasis is on bulk loads which are delivered to a single customer, but long distance hauls where a...

“The customer service complaint is universal in physical distribution operations. It is inevitable that even the most efficient of distribution systems will occasionally have failures; it is equally inevitable that from these failures will emanate complaints. Only if an active and systematic...

Canadian carriers' “value‐added” accounts for about one‐eighth of the total costs of marketing and distributing goods in the Canadian economy. This is a high proportion compared to other nations, and is a reflection of Canada's scattered and thin domestic market. More to the point,...

A hidden enemy of distribution efficiency is at work in almost all distribution systems. It causes increased distribution costs, yet, in many firms, seldom receives much management attention. Who, or what, is this hidden enemy? Quite simply, it is goods which require return to the vendor or...

There has always been a tendency amongst a fairly vocal and influential section of the operational research profession, both in Europe and in the U.S.A., to weight mathematical criteria rather heavily in judging the merits or otherwise of a piece of operational research. Regrettably, British...

One of the major problems attendant on the containerisation explosion has been the universal diversity of documentation. In addition, the role of traditional intermediaries in the international carriage of goods has in many cases changed, and nowhere is this more apparent than with the...