Abstract Freight forwarding companies provide transportation services to shipping companies by organizing shipment of freights from origins to destinations. They typically handle long-haul intermodal transportation requiring synchronization among different transportation legs and modes as well as complex bureaucratic and administrative operations, like customs clearance for international transportation. Because of the complexity of these operations, shipper companies prefer to focus on their core business activities and are more and more relying on third parties to organize shipments. In this paper we focus on the freight forwarding activity where the main transportation mode is air transportation. The problem has been recently introduced in the literature and finds interesting practical applications related to the recent raise in air freight transportation due to fast delivery times requested by e-commerce customers. In this paper, we propose a matheuristic algorithm based on the construction of feasible routes from origins to destinations and on the solution of a set-partitioning formulation. Computational tests are made on instances proposed in the literature which are based on real data. The results show that the matheuristic is capable of offering good solutions for large size instances within reasonable computing times.

中文翻译：

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空运货运代理服务问题的数学计算

摘要 货运代理公司通过组织货物从始发地到目的地的运输，为船公司提供运输服务。他们通常处理需要在不同运输路线和模式之间同步的长途多式联运以及复杂的官僚和行政操作，例如国际运输的清关。由于这些操作的复杂性，托运公司更愿意专注于他们的核心业务活动，并且越来越依赖第三方来组织发货。在本文中，我们关注主要运输方式为空运的货运代理活动。这个问题最近在文献中被引入，并发现了与最近由于电子商务客户要求的快速交货时间而导致的空运增加相关的有趣的实际应用。在本文中，我们提出了一种数学算法，该算法基于从起点到终点的可行路线的构建以及集合分区公式的解决方案。对文献中提出的实例进行了计算测试，这些实例基于真实数据。结果表明，数学算法能够在合理的计算时间内为大型实例提供良好的解决方案。我们提出了一种数学算法，该算法基于从起点到终点的可行路线的构建以及集合分区公式的解决方案。对文献中提出的实例进行了计算测试，这些实例基于真实数据。结果表明，数学算法能够在合理的计算时间内为大型实例提供良好的解决方案。我们提出了一种数学算法，该算法基于从起点到终点的可行路线的构建以及集合分区公式的解决方案。对文献中提出的实例进行了计算测试，这些实例基于真实数据。结果表明，数学算法能够在合理的计算时间内为大型实例提供良好的解决方案。