Integrated Production and Outbound Distribution Scheduling: Review and Extensions

In many applications involving make-to-order or time-sensitive (e.g., perishable, seasonal) products, finished orders are often delivered to customers immediately or shortly after the production. Consequently, there is little or no finished product inventory in the supply chain such that production and outbound distribution are very intimately linked and must be scheduled jointly in order to achieve a desired on-time delivery performance at minimum total cost. Research on integrated scheduling models of production and outbound distribution is relatively recent, but is growing very rapidly. In this paper, we provide a survey of such existing models. We present a unified model representation scheme, classify existing models into several different classes, and for each class of the models give an overview of the optimality properties, computational tractability, and solution algorithms for the various problems studied in the literature. We clarify the tractability of some open problems l...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: IOR
• Authors: Zhi-Long Chen
• Keywords: IOR 2010, Optimality Properties, Outbound Distribution, Representation Scheme