۱- Introduction

۲- The history of transportation and logistics

۳- Big data and internet of things

۴- Trends in supply chain management

۵- Trends in transportation

۶- Conclusions

References

Abstract

Problems in transportation and logistics had to be tackled long before computers and Operational Research (OR) became available to support decision making. After the first optimization models were developed, OR has substantially contributed in making transportation systems efficient and companies with complex transportation and logistics problems competitive. Over the years, technology has evolved and the same has done OR. In this paper, the history of problems and OR contributions in transportation and logistics will be shortly reviewed together with the evolution of technology. Then, the future trends in this area will be discussed together with potential OR contributions.

Introduction

Problems in transportation and logistics had to be tackled long before computers were invented and Operational Research (OR) became a discipline aimed at developing models and techniques to support decision making. After the first optimization models were developed, OR has substantially contributed in making transportation systems efficient and companies with complex transportation and logistics problems competitive. OR, as a system science, has captured the complexities of problems and the interactions among parts of a system to improve the quality of decision making. The OR methods have been dependent on data availability and in most cases have relied on computers. The availability of more data and of more computational capacity have made the OR methods more powerful. Over the years, technology has evolved and the same has done OR. The internet, technological developments, the individual use of information and communication devices, the widespread availability of massive amounts of data have created new challenges and opportunities to transportation and logistic systems, and to researchers in OR as well. The aim of this paper is to show that, over time, the contributions of OR to transportation and logistics have evolved, following the evolution of problems in the area and technology, and that the recent trends are creating exciting opportunities. In Section 2 the history of problems and OR contributions in transportation and logistics will be sketched out, together with the evolution of technology, to outline that problems in the area, tech nology and OR are strongly interconnected. Major general technological phenomena, namely big data and internet of things, are shortly presented in Section 3.