Information Considerations for Logistics Network Planning

Deciding where to locate stocking points and plants within a logistics network, which ports or vendor locations to use, and how the product should flow through this network are common strategic planning problems for many businesses. Management scientists have laboured for many years to create models that can assist businesses with this type of problem. Numerous such models are described in the management literature. Much attention is given to improving their scope, robustness, speed of solution, and mathematical sophistication. Very little attention is given to the information that drives these models and so strongly affects their accuracy and utility, yet management should have more concern about the input data to these models than about the way in which a particular model solves the problem.