Case Study: Transportation and Inventory in Logistics To improve business performance, companies use a variety of business improvement strategies. Logistics and supply chain management have long been viewed as critical factors in a company's ability to gain a competitive advantage. In fact, since the early 1980s, logistics and supply chain management have gotten a lot of attention. However, the management of supply chains is not well understood conceptually, and many authors have emphasised the importance of clear definitional constructs and conceptual frameworks on supply chain management. The traditional domains of inventory (including production planning) and transportation management are still the focus of operations research in logistics management. However, a notable trend is that most publications focus on specialised domains with notable features captured in their models, thereby contributing to the logistics and supply chain in novel ways. For example, perishable product inventory management (also known as deteriorating product inventory management) is a rather ancient and mature area in logistics and supply chain management, with inventory replenishment strategies being the primary focus of research. The distributor must make a suitable effort to preserve the freshness of the product throughout transit, and his performance in this regard has an impact on both the quality and quantity of the product delivered to the market. Because the amazing expansion in intermodal transportation over the last decade has not been matched by a corresponding level of academic effort, intermodal transportation research appears to have a lot of potentials. How to choose the optimal routes for shipments through the international intermodal network is one of the intermodal operational difficulties. A multi-objective multimodal multicommodity flow issue with time windows and concave costs is formulated, and an effective heuristic is proposed. The construction of an optimization model is the first attempt at building an analytical framework for planning rail-truck intermodal transportation of hazardous goods. This model plans and manages intermodal shipments to reflect contemporary practice, in which the model's routing decisions are based on the delivery schedules set by customers. However, the issue of train load planning in intermodal container ports was not considered during the process. Some companies are using a new hybrid approach that combines a few methodologies, including AI search methods, to achieve high-quality answers for complicated multimodal transportation challenges, taking advantage of the advantages of both types of techniques. The solution was used to handle certain inventory concerns in a real-world problem. The most important proposal for improving customer service was to adjust the inventory management policy so that customers would have a constant supply. There was a need in the largest division for a moderate investment in improving the customer service operation that would show little direct dollar return but would improve the ability to serve the customers well. These recommendations included a customer survey to determine true service requirements, implementation of a customer service measurement system, redesign and reorganization of the customer service department, and installation of a state-of-the-art telephone system. It was expected that the entire cost would be $240,000. It was also estimated that one other division had the potential to save approximately $200,000 in ongoing manpower costs by redesigning its customer service process and providing customer service training for $75,000. Source: Establish consulting firm (2022) Question 1 Define the term "Transportation" in the context of their company activity, using this case as an illustration. Explain the importance of selecting the appropriate mode of transportation in connection to the case above. Support your point of view with an example from a similar corporate situation to which you are familiar