An AHP based heuristic DPSO algorithm for generating multi criteria production-distribution plan

Multi-criteria integrated production-distribution problems were solved by many researchers using different optimization techniques. A novel analytic hierarchy process (AHP) based heuristic discrete particle swarm optimization (DPSO) algorithm is proposed in this research for solving difficult production-distribution problems. A bearing manufacturing industry's case is considered in this paper and the mathematical model is formulated as mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problem considering multi-period, multi-product and multi-plant scenarios. The three major objectives considered are total cost reduction, minimization of change in labor levels and percentage under-utilization. The results of the AHP based heuristic DPSO algorithm are compared with the branch and bound algorithm results generated using LINGO software. The approach gives good near optimal solutions. In addition to the bearing manufacturing industry dataset, two other test datasets are also solved.