Decision Support Framework for Production-Distribution Planning of Global Supply Chain: Decision Model and Algorithm

From the perspective of integrated supply chain resource allocation, the paper proposes three methods to solve the problem of integrated planning in the four-echelon supply chain network. The first one is a full MILP model which considers both production and distribution constraints. The second one is a two-stage MILP model which allocates the production demands to manufacturing sites in stage one and a distribution model is used to provide the distribution plans in stage two. The third one is a heuristic algorithm to find feasible plans efficiently. Several scenarios are tried out to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed methods. The result reveals that the heuristic algorithm is more efficient than the two MILP models.