A planning method for the integrated production and outbound distribution scheduling problem

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Companies are forced to concentrate on core competencies and a close collaboration with specialized partners in a supply chain due to the competitive situation on global markets. These partners often have different and conflictive goals. Thus, there is only an internal process optimisation and not an optimised planning result for the entire supply chain. Integrated planning is a supply chain management concept which enables a supply chain wide optimisation to reach the overall goals. In this research proposal an integrated planning method for the integrated production and outbound distribution planning problem will be developed. Most of the existing planning methods in this research field are production or transport oriented with a low integration level of these two sub-problems. Thus, there is a need for conceptual and methodological support for solving the integrated planning problem.The goal of this research proposal is the development of a new integrated planning method for the focused part of the supply chain with a high integration level and an improved performance. Two separate strategies for the development of integrated planning methods and a number of milestones are defined to reach this goal. Before the development of integrated planning methods will start, there is a need to generate a basic underlying model. The existing planning methods uses different underlying models, which prevents a competitive comparison of performance indicators of the overall planning results. Therefore, the first sub-goal is the development of a basic model for evaluation of new planning methods, which will be developed in this research project, and the comparison with existing methods.The application of evolutionary algorithms is the first strategy for the development of an integrated planning method. Already known methods from the production scheduling and from transportation planning will be used for generating a starting plan. The evolutionary algorithm generates and optimises alternative solutions based on this starting plan respecting the restriction of each sub-problem. For the evaluation of the alternative plans a suitable function is required.The main characteristics of the second strategy is a multistage decomposition of the sub-problems production scheduling and transportation planning and a new structure for the problem solving process. Starting with a clustering each sub-problem will be solved and optimised separately in each cluster. Subsequently, there is a two step integration procedure in order to obtain an overall integrated planning result. Finally, the integrated planning methods developed will be evaluated using the basic model. Furthermore, there will be additional investigations regarding sensitivity of integrated planning results.