Few heuristic optimization algorithms to solve the multi-period fixed charge production-distribution problem

This paper deals with a multi-period fixed charge production-distribution problem associated with backorder and inventories. The objective is to determine the size of the shipments from each supplier and backorder and inventories at each period, so that the total cost incurred during the entire period towards production, transportation, backorder and inventories is minimised. A 0-1 mixed integer programming problem is formulated. Genetic algorithm based population search heuristic, Simulated annealing based neighbourhood search heuristic and Equivalent variable cost based simple heuristic are proposed to solve the formulation. The proposed methodologies are evaluated by comparing their solutions with the lower bound solutions. The comparisons reveal that Genetic algorithm and Simulated annealing algorithm generate better solutions than the Equivalent variable cost solutions and are capable of providing solutions close to the lower bound value of the problems.