A holonic approach based integration methodology for transportation and warehousing functions of the supply network

The supply chain (SC) is often defined as a network that is composed of different functions, including suppliers, manufacturing plants, warehouses/distribution centers, retailers and customers. A supply network (SN) is a sequence of different and multiple numbers of functions and individual functional units that must satisfy all capacities and demand requirements imposed by customers with minimum cost to the network. The most important functions of a SN are warehousing and transportation functions. This paper addresses the warehousing and transportation network design problem that involves determining the best strategy for distributing the sub-products from the suppliers to the warehouse and from the warehouse to the manufacturers. Considering some similarities between holonic systems and SN systems, a holonic approach based modeling methodology is proposed in this study. A multiple supplier, single warehouse and multiple manufacturer system are considered to be an integrated warehousing and transportation network. Consequently, a linear programming model is presented to maximize the profit of both of the overall SN and the individual functional units of the SN functions.