Description:Fierce competition in today's global market provides powerful motivation for developing ever more sophisticated logistics systems. This book, written for the logistics manager and researcher, presents a survey of the modern theory and application of logistics. Part I considers the basic performance analysis techniques. In particular, tools required to perform worst-case and average-case analysis are discussed. Part II then covers vehicle routing problems and Part III concentrates on production and inventory problems. Part IV considers hierarchical problems in logistics networks and, in particular, the integration of different levels of decisions. Finally, Part V describes case studies in which decision support tools for the design and management of large-scale logistic systems are developed and used. The result is a timely and authoritative survey of this field which many practitioners and researchers will find to be an invaluable companion to their work.