Modelling integrated multi-item supplier selection with shipping frequencies

Official URL: http://www.qjie.ir/article_222_8.html

There are many benefits for coordination of multiple suppliers when single supplier cannot satisfy buyer demands. In addition, buyer needs to purchase multiple items in a real supply chain. So, a model that satisfies these requests has many advantages. We extend the existing approaches in the literature that assume all suppliers need to be put on a common replenishment cycle and each supplier delivers exactly once in a cycle. More specifically, inspired by approaches that perform well for the Economic Lot Scheduling Problem, we assume an integer number of times a supplier can ship available items in an overall replenishment cycle. Because of complexity issue, a new approach based on genetic algorithm is employed to solve the presented model. Results depict that new model is more beneficial and practical.