A Proposed Model for Integrated Production-Distribution Planning

Increased global competition, rising costs and rapid technological change are among the factors that have turned management focus towards supply chain management. Thus, improving efficiency and cutting costs at all stages of the supply chain are viewed as critical issues to remain competitive. In this sense, integrated decision models are having increasing interest in order to improve the quality of planning and to reduce associated costs. An integrated multi-commodity production planning and capacitated vehicle routing with multi-time periods model has been presented. The model is based on reducing the amount of storage in the plant location and targets dynamic small deliveries instead. The proposed model is used as a decision support tool that improved the decision making process for an international logistics provider company in terms of the quality and speed of the decision making by eliminating the needed feasibility checks and feedback loops. This model can be easily adapted to different scenarios and to extend and/or vary the problem.