Designing Wheat Transportation Network in Iran, Using Hub-Location Approach with Intermodal Transportation

Wheat is one of the strategic goods has a significant share of household portfolios. Due to the high volume of wheat transportation in our country and the importance of providing timely, more attention needs to the distribution system of wheat. Current system for wheat distribution is direct shipment and there is no planning for wheat transportation. Due to the high volume of wheat transportation in different months, using the distribution points seems to be practical. For this reason, we are going to use hub-location approach for distributing wheat in the country. As results shows, the new distribution network will significantly reduce transportation costs. For modeling the wheat transportation network, we use hub location models with fix costs, so the number of optimum hubs will be determined. Also this model considers the characteristics of wheat distribution network such as seasonal production and various modes for transportation of wheat. For solving the problem, CPLEX software is used. Other outputs of model are determination the optimal paths from the original points to hubs, hubs to hubs, and hubs to destination points for each period. Also the types of transportation modes between hubs are determined. Finally this study ended with Sensitivity Analysis of different parameters and conclusion.