What is Distribution Planning

Supply chain is a complex system in which most of the activities are inter-related, and changes in one of these activities can affect the performance of the other processes. Thus, integrated management strategies in a supply chain can yield considerable advantages throughout the system as supply chain members and customers become more integrated. In this study, a memetic algorithm is proposed to solve the integrated production-distribution problem. The objective of the problem is to find optimal production quantity, customer delivery quantity, and schedule to minimize the total system cost, which is composed of production setup cost and variable production cost, inventory holding costs, and distribution cost. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is tested on the existing data sets. According to test results, the proposed algorithm is a very effective method to solve integrated production-distribution problems. To assess to benefits and applicability of the method on the real-life problems, a case study is conducted in a Turkish water manufacturing company.