A model for effective management of air cargo operations

Demands for air cargo transportation are increasing daily. Increasing trend on demands directs the firms in the market to invest new facilities; on the other hand it invites new actors to the market. This situation brings an intensive competition. In these intensive competition markets selling prices are formed close to each other. So, supply and demand in the market determine the price, service provider companies are not able to determine the prices freely on their own. However, these companies have to profit in order to sustain their life. The companies that they can not adjust their sales price have no choice without profiting by performing effective cost management. For an air cargo forwarder, cost is determined by offered prices of agents who perform the operations. An air cargo forwarder fulfills its jobs that committed to the costumers by assigning to the agents. These operations are transportation, storage, air cargo transportation etc. In this thesis, it is studied that how an aircargo forwarder deliver its jobs with optimal cost by assigning the activities of jobs to the potential agents. Different sizes of airfreight shipment planning problem were solved by using genetic algorithm and tabu search methods. It is showed that the method using genetic algorithm gave the best solutions.