Scientia Iranica

Scientia Iranica

Solving a multi-stage multi-product solid supply chain network design problem by meta-heuristics

Authors
Department of Mathematics, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
This paper presents an effective optimization method based on meta-heuristics algorithms for the design of a multi-stage, multi-product solid supply chain network design problem. First, a mixed integer linear programming model is proposed. Second, because the problem is a NP-hard, three meta-heuristics algorithms, namely Differential evolution (DE), Particle swarm optimization (PSO) and Gravitational search algorithm (GSA) are developed for the first time of this kind of problem. To the best of our knowledge, neither DE and PSO nor GSA has been considered for the multi-stage solid supply chain network design problems. Furthermore, the Taguchi experimental design method is used to adjust the parameters and operators of the proposed algorithms. Finally, to evaluate the impact of increasing the problem size on the performance of our proposed algorithms, different problem sizes are applied and the associated results are compared with each other.
Keywords

Volume 23, Issue 3 - Serial Number 3
Transactions on Industrial Engineering (E)
June 2016
Pages 1428-1440

  • Receive Date 06 July 2015
  • Accept Date 27 July 2017