Enhancing business by procuring and dispensing items among supply chain members using multi-objective approach

Abstract

Manufacturers in various sectors encounter several challenges in providing timely delivery to a wide range of stakeholders. This article focuses on the issues that manufacturers have while purchasing various commodities from suppliers, processing them in manufacturing plants, and distributing them to retailers for customer delivery. These tasks must be done within unique limits. To demonstrate this situation, a mathematical model was developed, yielding to a multi-objective optimization problem subsequently it was solved using a Genetic Algorithm (GA). The location, shape, range, and distribution of the nondominated Pareto front were shown using 3DRadVis techniques. In addition, certain limits were considered such as selecting suppliers, plants, and distributors at the manufacturing level. The numerical example demonstrated the model’s usefulness and efficiency. It was also observed that with the use of GA and 3DRadVis techniques, timely delivery to the stakeholders is achievable.