ISYE 6336 SCE II: Freight Transportation, Spring 2026

Description

This course provides an in-depth study of freight transportation systems and engineering approaches for the design, planning, and control of such systems. Selected freight systems will be studied in depth, and we will introduce important decision problems, optimization models, and solution approaches for these systems. We will focus only on models that allow us to support decisions at the scale required in practice. Students will practice implementing such models using the tools required to solve practically-sized instances.

Calendar

Below find the schedule of topics that are covered in ISYE 6336 and the course meeting details. The mode will indicate whether the class will be held in-person or whether it will be held remotely by MS Teams meeting. The color will indicate the type of class meeting: a green box indicates lecture material, a blue box will be a discussion session covering content that should be reviewed in advance, a yellow box is for exam dates, and a red box will alert students to other important dates.

Date	Mode	Topic	Notes
Jan 12	In-person	Introduction	Introduction to freight transportation systems. Slides available on course Canvas. Please also review these slides covering the fundamentals of freight transport logistics.
Jan 14	In-person	Introduction to freight transportation	Freight transportation introduction continued. Slides available on course Canvas.
Jan 19	No class	Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday	We will not hold class today. For your information, Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta in the Auburn Avenue area just east of downtown and he did much of his important work from Atlanta. The US maintains a National Historic Park in the area, and it is worth a visit before you leave Atlanta.
Jan 21	In-person	Ocean freight transportation systems; static flow models	Introduction to ocean freight transportation. Slides available on course Canvas.
Jan 26	Remote	Static flow models	Principles of modeling transportation systems with flows. Building static flow models for transportation analysis and decision-making. Deterministic queueing models and cumulative curves Class will meet remote due to GT modified operations.
Jan 28	In-person	Static flow models	Transportation dispatch batching. Cyclic models of resource flows. Static flow analysis for sizing fleets of mobile resources.
Feb 2	In-person	Empty repositioning flows	Static flow models for repositioning empty mobile resources. Introduction to minimum cost network flow linear program.
Feb 4	In-person	Empty repositioning flows	Building inputs for empty repositioning problems.
Feb 9	In-person	Empty repositioning example	Empty repositioning flow optimization example for an ocean container shipper. Remaining empty capacity. Python implementation.
Feb 11	In-person	Solving network flow problems	Introduction to networkx as a python network modeling tool. Integration of networkx and math programming tools in python.
Feb 16	In-person	Ocean container management	Joint management of empty and loaded ocean containers using vessel transportation.
Feb 18	In-person	Freight flow assignment	Multi-commodity network flow models for freight flow assignment. Joint management of loaded and empty transport containers.
Feb 23	In-person	Truck freight transportation	Truckload, less-than-truckload, and package truck transportation. Operating models. Role of transfer terminals in consolidation trucking.
Feb 25	In-person	Consolidation network planning	Planning in consolidation networks. Middle-mile longhaul vs last-mile local transportation. Freight transfer paths in middle-mile networks.
Mar 2	In-person	Consolidation network planning	Freight assignment to freight transfer paths in capacitated middle-mile networks. Planning capacity with mixed-integer programming models for flow and load planning.
Mar 4	In-person	Consolidation network planning	Python implementations of middle-mile freight assignment and flow and load planning.
Mar  9	In-person	Midterm Examination	The exam will be 75 minutes and held during class. Topics will include material up to and including the lecture on Feb 23.
Mar 23, 25	No class		We will not hold class during the Georgia Tech Spring Break week.