About CYTED NETWORK (reference here)

Enterprises in the retailing, logistics and transportation sectors have to face several difficult challenges related to the complexity of logistics and distribution strategies. Among others, they have to design business and distribution strategies  as well as policies which combine competitiveness, and economic efficiency with sustainability criteria. These issues are  critical, especially for small and medium enterprises (SME), since they hardly have the economic and human resources necessary to implement and manage the complex mathematical methods associated with logistics optimization. One  strategy that SMEs can follow to become more competitive is to collaborate with other companies (Horizontal  Cooperation), allowing the use of economies of scale.  Fortunately, new quantitative methods can be developed now thanks to theoretical advances as well as to the increase  in computer power. This is the case of hybrid methods combining metaheuristics, simulation, exact methods, parallel and  distributed computing, multi-agent approaches, etc. In particular, as a new research field, 'simheuristics' evolves from the simulation-optimization knowledge field and goes one step further by proposing the integration of simulation techniques, metaheuristics, and Internet computing as the most efficient way to deal with the uncertainty and complexity levels which characterize most real-life problems in logistics and transportation.

According to the previous ideas, we have settled the following global objectives for our project: