Integrated production and outbound distribution scheduling problem with due dates

Integrated production and outbound distribution scheduling (IPODS) problem consists of two combinatorial optimization problem which are known as "machine scheduling" and "vehicle routing" in the literature. There are many situations that will require production and distribution decisions have to be made together in the case that there is very limited time between production and distribution activities such as perishable products or products which have limited lifespan. In addition, make to order businesses based on just in time philosophy is another application area because of the zero-inventory level between the production and distribution phase. In this study, we developed a new Memetic Algorithm (MA) to obtain optimal or near-optimal solutions in a reasonable time. The performance of the algorithm is compared with the solutions of the mathematical model of the same problem studied by [1]. Computational results show that proposed MA is capable of finding optimal or near optimal solutions which are found by CPLEX in less than a minute.