Authors:
Tejinder Pal Singh
;
Nicoleta Neagu
;
Michele Quattrone
and
Philippe Briet
Affiliation:
Air Liquide, United States
Keyword(s):
Network Design, Optimization, Location-Routing, Packaged Gases, Inventory Management, Decomposition Approach, Heuristics, Mixed Integer Linear Programming Model.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Applications
;
e-Business
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Logistics
;
Network Optimization
;
Operational Research
;
Pattern Recognition
;
Software Engineering
;
Supply Chain Management
Abstract:
Network design of the supply chain is an important and strategic aspect of logistics management. In this
paper, we address the network design problem specific to packaged gases (e.g., cylinder) supply chain. We
propose an integrated framework that allows for the determination of the optimal facility locations, the
filling plant production capacities, the inventory at plants and hubs, and the number of packages to be routed
in primary and secondary transportation. We formulate the problem as a mixed integer program and then
develop a decomposition approach to solve it. We illustrate the proposed framework with numerical
examples from real-life packaged gases supply chain. The results show that the decomposition approach is
effective in solving a broad range of problem sizes. We also benchmark the results from the decomposition
approach by solving the complete packaged gases network design model for smaller test cases.