Multi-Echelon Multi-Period Supply Chain Network Design for Agile Manufacturing using Tabu Search Algorithm

Abstract

An efficient Supply Chain Network Design (SCND) can substantially improve the performance of an organizational structure. This research explores the designing of a supply chain network for agile organizations with several echelons over several periods. It is assumed the problem involves multiple customers with high-quantity demands. The problem is modeled to integrate decision variables regarding the selection of companies to be involved at each echelon and the volumes of production, inventory, and transportation for each company with the objective of minimizing total operating costs across the entire supply chain. Given that the problem is NP-Hard, Tabu Search (TS) is used to solve the developed model. The results are compared with the results of the Lagrangian method employed by one of the recent work in the literature. This comparison shows that TS algorithm outperforms the Lagrangian algorithm in obtaining optimal solutions.