Logistics Systems Optimization under Competition

Nowadays, optimization on logistics and supply chain systems is a crucial and critical issue in industrial and systems engineering. Important areas of logistics and supply chain systems include transportation control, inventory management, and facility location planning. Under a competitive market environment, decision making for all these critical areas requires more sophisticated mathematical modeling and analysis. For example, the noncooperative and cooperative analytical game theory and computational based evolutionary algorithms are some popular tools in exploring logistics systems optimization problems under competition. Since many of these optimization problems are complex, innovative analytical models and novel algorithms will be needed in order to optimize the respective logistics systems under the competitive environment. Motivated by the importance of the topic, this special issue of this journal is compiled and it aims at publishing the timely and significant findings on scientific research in logistics systems optimization under competition. This special issue puts high emphasis on the advance of optimization methods, innovative models, and analytical explorations from an industrial engineering and operations research perspective.