Cooperative game theory approach to allocating benefits of horizontal cooperation

Logistics costs in general, and transportation costs in particular, represent a large fraction of the operating costs of many companies. One way to try to reduce these costs is through horizontal cooperation among shippers. Thus, when the transportation needs of two or more companies are merged, their collective transportation requirements can be met at lower cost. The attainable cost savings are due to economies of scale, which translate into cheaper rates due to increased negotiation power, use of larger vehicles and bundling of shipments. In this paper, a linear model is presented and used to study the cost savings that different companies may achieve when they merge their transportation requirements. On the one hand, solving this optimization model for different collaboration scenarios allows testing and quantifying the synergies among different potential partners, thus identifying the most profitable collaboration opportunities. On the other, the problem of allocating the joint cost savings of the cooperation is tackled using cooperative game theory. The proposed approach is illustrated with an example in which different cooperative game solution concepts are compared. Extensive numerical experiments have also been carried out to gain insight into the properties of the corresponding cost savings game and the behavior of the different solution concepts. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.