An optimal solution to a three echelon supply chain network with multi-product and multi-period

Recently, Kadadevaramath et al. (2012) [1] presented a mathematical model for optimizing a three echelon supply chain network. Their model is an integer linear programming (ILP) model. In order to solve it, they developed five algorithms; four of them are based on a particle swarm optimization (PSO) method and the other is a genetic algorithm (GA). In this paper, we develop a more general mathematical model that contains the model developed by Kadadevaramath et al. (2012) [1]. Furthermore, we show that all instances proved in Kadadevaramath et al. (2012) [1] can easily be solved optimally by any integer linear programming solver.