تصمیم گیری چند معیاره برای تنظیمات بسته بندی پیچیده در حمل و نقل سطحی بار هوایی  Multi-criteria decision-making for complex bundling configurations in surface transportation of air freight

1. Introduction Air cargo, which is defined as any property (e.g.: freight, mail, express parcels) transported by a full-freight aircraft, a combiaircraft, or under the main deck of a passenger aircraft (Domingues et al., 2014), has at least two advantages over surface transportation (sea, road and rail), the first of which is the speed of the transportation, which is required for specific goods, such as perishable goods or goods that require next morning delivery (e.g. newspapers). The second advantage is the low risk for damage or loss, which means that high-value, time-sensitive goods with a high value-to-weight ratio are suitable for air transportation (Zhang and Zhang, 2002; Ohashi et al., 2005). The air freight transport chain has different stages, starting at the shipper, leading via forwarders and the carrier (in our case the airline) towards the consignee. The logistics chain of air freight is visualized in Fig. 1 (adopted from Petersen, 2007). Shippers, the clients of the air cargo transporting service, are positioned at the start of the logistics chain (Popescu et al., 2010). They use freight forwarders to transport their shipment to a carrier. Other services being offered by freight forwarders include securing freight, storing freight, consolidating freight, organizing value added services and loading freight trucks. The carrier moves the shipment with airplanes to the respective destination airport, from which forwarders transport and deliver the freight shipment to the consignee, the recipient of the shipment (Petersen, 2007). Fig. 2 shows an example of a high-level overview of the air freight transport chain. Usually, carriers contract Third Party Logistics Service providers (3PL) in the country or continent of origin to collect freight from freight forwarders and send it to the airport, together with other shipments. The same typically applies to the destination airport, but then in reverse order, as outlined in Fig. 2. Here we briefly describe the actors involved in this chain: Shipper: Shipper is the owner or supplier of the freight. It is also called ‘consignor’, its ultimate goal is to send shipment to the ‘consignee’.