Integrated Production and Outbound Distribution Scheduling: Review and Extensions

Zhi-Long Chen ()
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Zhi-Long Chen: Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742

Operations Research, 2010, vol. 58, issue 1, 130-148

Abstract: In many applications involving make-to-order or time-sensitive (e.g., perishable, seasonal) products, finished orders are often delivered to customers immediately or shortly after the production. Consequently, there is little or no finished product inventory in the supply chain such that production and outbound distribution are very intimately linked and must be scheduled jointly to achieve a desired on-time delivery performance at minimum total cost. Research on integrated scheduling models of production and outbound distribution is relatively recent but is growing very rapidly. In this paper, we provide a survey of such existing models. We present a unified model representation scheme, classify existing models into several different classes, and for each class of the models give an overview of the optimality properties, computational tractability, and solution algorithms for the various problems studied in the literature. We clarify the tractability of some open problems left in the literature and some new problems by providing intractability proofs or polynomial-time exact algorithms. We also identify several problem areas and issues for future research.

Keywords: production scheduling; outbound distribution; survey; representation scheme; optimality properties; solution algorithms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (103)

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