The Hub Operation Scheduling Problem

This paper treats the problem of scheduling a transportation system consisting of one central terminal and a number of outlying terminals. Commodities are transported between the central terminal and outlying terminals, but not directly between outlying terminals. The immediate demand is probabilistic. The criterion function includes the cost of failure to transport commodities when they are available, and the cost of moving transport equipment empty from one terminal to another. An iterative solution procedure, requiring a precomputable number of steps, is developed and illustrated by examples.