Modelling Integrated Multi-item Supplier Selection with Shipping Frequencies

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

Keywords:

Integrated supply chain , Multi-item , Frequent shipping , Multi-supplier , Supplier selection