Design of supply chain network with bidirectional flows and capacity constraints

Coordination in the supply chains has elicited considerable attention in academia and industry level. In this paper, the problem of designing a coordinated supply chain network, which includes the determination of location for distribution centers and the allocation of customers and suppliers to the corresponding centers investigated. The problem simultaneously involves the distribution of products from the manufacturer to the customers and the collection of components from the suppliers to the manufacturer via cross-docking at distribution centers. The co-location of different types of distribution centers and coordinated transportation are introduced to achieve cost savings. The main contribution of this study is the expansion of location-distribution models in a one flow to bidirectional flows models. This problem is formulated as a nonlinear mixed programming. Then, using the CPLEX method, the performance of the proposed model is evaluated by performing numerical experiments. We also examinemanagerial insights using sensitivity analysis and show the benefits of a coordinated model in comparison with the uncoordinated approach. In the end, the results and future research directions are outlined

Keywords:

Facility locating , coordinated transportation , bidirectional flows