Planning methods and decision support systems in vehicle routing problems for timber transportation: a review

Transportation operations account for a significant part of the wood procurement cost. Therefore, reduction in transportation costs through enhanced efficiency of these operations has motivated a considerable amount of research effort in many countries. A substantial part of the research has been dedicated to the vehicle routing problem, i.e. the planning of the set of routes to be taken by a fleet of trucks to deliver timber from harvest areas to industries. This constitutes the operational part of transportation planning and is the part we focus on. The paper surveys the planning methods and decision support systems regarding the vehicle routing problem for timber transportation. Also, a general description of this problem is proposed, based on a summary of the main attributes encountered in each method proposed and/or implemented.