A LOCATION-ALLOCATION MODEL FOR LOGISTICS INTEGRATION CENTERS

Although Brazilian Government has been releasing some public policies in order to improve the competitiveness of transport sector, e.g. National Plan for Logistics and Transportation, this sector is still subjected to excessive logistics costs. Thus, the logistics integration centers (LICs) show up as an attractive option to attaining efficient intermodal transportation. Therefore, this paper aims to apply the mixed integer linear programming model of Guimaraes (2015) to the Brazilian soybean flows (considering the PNLT origin-destination matrix), in order to evaluated if (and what extend) the transportation costs would decrease if LICs were available. This model aims to minimize the total cost of transport, strictly satisfying the peer-to-peer demand. At the end, we could point out the best locations for soybean LICs and their capacities, helping the decision-maker to define the operational structures of LICs as well as their feasibility studies. Besides, we could estimate the monetary savings implied by the LICs usage, under the database considered.