During the fall 2011 I have been teaching the course “Transportation and distribution systems” an optional course for undergraduate students. We have considered various topics within transportation such as its role in the global economy, modal choice, 3PL, VRP problems, flow problems, airline management, ITS, green logistics etc.
Each week the students was given an exercise where they in most cases had to formulate and solve an mathematical programming model. I also have tried to introduce CPLEX OPL studio to them with minor success. Mostly they like to formulate their models in Excel and with OpenSolver it is possible even for quite large models.