Title: An integrated production and distribution model for the supply of relief kits in flood relief supply chains

Authors: Abyson Scaria; Brijesh Paul

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mar Athanasius College of Engineering, Kothamangalam, APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University, Kerala, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mar Athanasius College of Engineering, Kothamangalam, APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University, Kerala, India

Abstract: Relief supply chains should provide the relief supplies quickly and efficiently to maximise the survival rate, and hence, the integration of supply chain operations is extremely critical. In this work, we consider a single echelon relief supply chain for the supply of relief kits and model it as an integrated production and outbound distribution scheduling (IPODS) problem. The mixed integer programming model formulated is solved using a mathematical solver to obtain optimal solutions. For realistic sized problems, a heuristically initialised genetic algorithm (HIGA), using a nearest first greedy (NFG) heuristic is proposed. The data from the massive floods that occurred in 2018 in the State of Kerala, India is used to evaluate the model. The proposed new algorithm produces near optimal solutions for the test problems in relatively short computation times and is fast enough to be used interactively in a decision support system.

Keywords: relief supply chain; integrated production and outbound distribution scheduling; IPODS; nearest first greedy; NFG heuristic; heuristically initialised genetic algorithm; HIGA; decision support system.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLSM.2024.141700

International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 2024 Vol.49 No.2, pp.173 - 187

Received: 19 Aug 2021
Accepted: 08 Feb 2022
Published online: 01 Oct 2024 *

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