A SIMULATION BASED APPROACH FOR OPTIMIZATION OF MULTI-STAGE PRODUCTION-DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS WITH BATCH ORDER

摘要

This paper deals with inventory cost optimization of a multi-stage production-distribution system that is composed of a series of plants separated by warehouses for semi-finished goods and finished goods. Customer orders arrive randomly at the finished goods warehouse with random order size. Each warehouse is controlled according to a (R, nQ) inventory policy. The production orders sent by a warehouse to its upstream plant are processed in a FIFO order and shipped to the warehouse order by order. Transportation time from plant to warehouse is fixed. To minimize the average total inventory holding and demand backlogging cost, we developed a simulation based optimization method. A special attention is given to optimizing the simulation allocation budget. Numerical experiences show that our new method can efficiently solve the discrete optimization problem proposed in this paper.