New algorithms for locating facilities and production and distribution of multiple commodities in an integrated multi-echelon system

Determination of best sites for warehouses and manufacturing plants and distribution of multiple products from plants to customers through warehouses is an important issue in the planning and operation of a physical distribution system. Production of products and their distribution to different customer zones should in essence reflect the product line, its demand characteristics and the economies of production. It is impossible to isolate a single production and distribution strategy which is best applied across all industries. Hence it is critical to design a system that must be tailored to match the industry's objectives with respect to product & price.;The main focus of the thesis is to design multi-product facility logistics systems that would aid the decision maker with a set of decisions that strike the best balance among several cost components. Decisions must be made concerning the location of facilities and the mix of products that will be offered from each facility.;In the first section, we develop a multi-product warehouse location problem. The multi-product problem recognizes that a firm may engage in a variety of distribution activities that may differ in their demand patterns and cost structures. In this class of problems we consider the warehouses to be capacitated. We develop a solution procedure to solve the capacitated warehouse logistics problem.;In the second section, we provide a two level design problem. A number of production plants supply the warehouses with multiple products; this in turn supplies the potential customer zones with specified demand quantities of the products. It is required to select the optimum set of plants and warehouses and to plan production capacities, warehouses capacities and quantities shipped so as to minimize the total operating cost over a given planning period.;The third section addresses a class of production-distribution design problems which is characterized by multiple products, raw materials vendors, plant and warehouse sites and customer zones which demand multiple units of different products. The integrated model belongs to the production-distribution, facility location-allocation type of problems. We provide a mixed integer programming formulation together with a solution procedure for the problem.