Planning and Optimisation of Complex Supply Chains: An Integrated Approach for Solving Aggregate Production-Distribution Planning Problems

Supply chain management concerns with the selection of strategies and methodologies to facilitate the optimal flow of material from raw material suppliers to the end-users through procurement, production and distribution activities. Implementation of a supply chain system has crucial impacts on a company's financial performance. Overall supply chain performance is influenced significantly by decisions taken in its production-distribution (P-D) network. A complex P-D planning problem integrates decisions in production, transportation and warehousing as well as inventory management in order to minimise the overall system costs, while ensuring all products are produced at the right quantities and distributed to the right customers at the right time. This book aims to propose an integrated approach for the optimisation of complex aggregate P-D planning problems. To demonstrate the capability of the proposed approach in achieving the optimum solution, the developed model in this book is implemented to solve a real-life large-scale P-D planning problem.