What is Distribution Center

Supply chain management is the managing of all processes of goods, services, and information from suppliers to customers. Transportation network design is an important part of effective supply chain management. This chapter presents the two-stage fixed-charge transportation problem in a supply chain to minimize the total cost containing the opening cost of distribution centers, transportation cost from manufacture to distribution centers and from distribution centers to customers, and fixed cost for transportation from distribution centers to customers. There are the capacity constraints on distribution centers in order to consider real life situations in this chapter. A constructive based algorithm and a population-based algorithm are proposed to solve this complex optimization problem. Taguchi experimental design is applied for determining the best combinations of parameters. The experimental studies are conducted to compare the performance of the proposed algorithms according to solution quality.