Optimal Supplier Selection and Order Allocation for Multi-Period Multi-Product Manufacturing Incorporating Customer Flexibility

摘要

Effective and efficient supplier selection andorder allocation are essential for a manufacturer to ensurestable material flows in a highly flexible and competitive supplychain. This paper attempts to solve the problem of optimalsupplier selection and order allocation for multi-periodmulti-product manufacturing when customer flexibility exists.A new mathematical model in the form of a mixed integerprogramming (MIP) model is developed to describe thecharacteristics of the problem. The objective is to maximize themanufacturer’s profit subject to the various operatingconstraints of the supply chain. In addition, a new hybridalgorithm based on the strengths of constraint programming(CP) and simulated annealing (SA) is developed to solve thiscomplex combinatorial optimization problem which is NP-hard.The developed algorithm is applied to solve a set of randomlygenerated test problems to evaluate its performance.Comparison of the computational results obtained with thoseobtained by using the commercial software ILOG OPL clearlyshows that the methodology developed in this paper is aneffective and efficient approach to assist the manufacturer informulating optimal supplier selection and order allocationdecisions.