Coordinating production and transport scheduling in SCM through rigorous and heuristic-based methods

A. BONFILL; C.A. MÉNDEZ; A. ESPUÑA; L. PUIGJANER

Cincinnati, OH, USA

Conferencia; AIChE 2005 Annual Meeting; 2005

AICHE

Two alternative modeling approaches that rely on a rigorous MILP formulation and a heuristic-based open framework are presented. The mathematical formulation is based on a continuous-time representation, where the assignment and sequencing decision variables are managed independently. Concerning the heuristic framework, common dispatching rules are used to address the production problem, while an order-based heuristic algorithm has been developed for transport scheduling.Even a simple SC configuration leads to a large-scale optimization problem to which obtaining the optimal production and transport schedules with reasonable CPU time becomes quite difficult. The aptitude of both methods for generating good schedules in a limited time is evaluated and compared through different examples. The results obtained show the applicability of both modeling frameworks and illustrate the benefits of developing solution techniques coupling both the accuracy of mathematical approaches and the flexibility of heuristic-based methods to efficiently address the complexity of a real problem. The importance of coordinating both activities in a SC environment is also highlighted.