Production and Transportation Scheduling and Allocation of Orders in the Supply Chain

In this paper a scheduling problem in a 2-stage supply chain is discussed. Suppliers are in the first stage and in the second stage, there are vehicles which carry orders to a manufacturing center. The purpose is to allocate orders to suppliers, sequence the suppliers’ production, allocate orders to transport vehicles and prioritize orders that should be carried by vehicles to minimize the total time of the process and transportation. This issue has not yet been discussed in the literature. First, a mixed integer programming mathematical model is presented. Then, in order to solve the problem, a new algorithm is proposed which is a new combination of genetic and Simulated Annealing Algorithms. To evaluate the performance of the algorithm, it is compared with one of the algorithms presented in the literature, genetic algorithm and simulated annealing algorithm, separately. Comparison results indicate the advantage of the proposed algorithm in comparison with other algorithms.