Modeling and performance evaluation of the intermodal freight transportation chain (door to door service)

The global economy with recent advances in communications and information technology, as well as a rapidly growing array of logistics options, have put a remodel of the transportation activities. In this context, logistics is becoming more focused on promoting of intermodality. The challenge is to determine how to successfully accomplish this integration between different actors of intermodal freight transportation chain (door to door) which collaborate in an unstable and dynamic environment.
The objectives of this paper are to: 1) seek to describe an intermodal freight transportation chain modeling framework designed to overcome this difficulty by establishing an meta model of domain and its interaction protocols, and 2) provide a simulation approach to identify those factors which affect performance and collaboration decisions.