The questions surrounding distribution systems are of prime economic importance. The scale of these systems is increasing at a fast rate, because of the growth of international commerce and travel. The advent of e-commerce will only increase their scale, as well as change their nature; goods purchased over the internet must be delivered; also, they often get returned. Related to these questions is the rich field of network design problems, which arise in particular in transportation logistics and in telecommunications planning.
The theory of location is evolving, with questions such as competitive location or the location of non-punctual or structured objects being studied; in routing, the advent of better communication devices and increased computational power make real-time dynamic routing a possibility. These changes imply that new problems with different mathematical properties must be tackled and new algorithmic strategies devised.
This workshop will include a series of twenty surveys, covering both the more traditional and the newer subject areas, with additional contributions by conference participants. Areas covered include routing; location; economic aspects, pricing, e-commerce; fleet management; telecommunications; network design.
