In some retail chains, the suppliers in a typical supply chain deliver the merchandise till the warehouse level. In other cases, the suppliers themselves ship the merchandise to the store. However there might be cases where for cost savings or other reasons, the retailer uses its own third part or internal transportation network for bringing the merchandise to the store. Therefore, there might be a third party or internal transportation network of the retailer, which will carry the shipping and transportation planning activities for optimizing this line of the supply chain.
In such cases this activity will involve extensive use of Operations Research and Statistical tools for optimum analysis.
