Optimizing a Worldwide-Scale Shipper Transportation Planning in a Carmaker Inbound Supply Chain

Abstract: We study the shipper-side design of large-scale inbound transportation networks, motivated by Renault's global supply chain. We introduce the Shipper Transportation Design Problem, which integrates consolidation, routing, and regularity constraints, and propose a tailored Iterated Local Search (ILS) metaheuristic. The algorithm combines large-neighborhood search with MILP-based perturbations and exploits bundle-specific decompositions and giant container bounds to obtain scalable lower bounds and effective benchmarks. Computational experiments on real industrial data show that the ILS achieves an average gap of 7.9% to the best available lower bound on world-scale instances with more than 700,000 commodities and 1,200,000 arcs, improving Renault's current planning solutions by 23.2%. To our knowledge, this is the first approach to solve shipper-side transportation design problems at such scale. Our analysis further yields managerial insights: accurate bin-packing models are essential for realistic consolidation, highly regular plans offer the best balance between cost and operational stability, and outsourcing is only attractive in low-volume contexts, while large-scale networks benefit from in-house planning.