Mathematical modeling for simultaneous design of plants and supply chain in the batch process industry

Most supply chain design models have focused on the integration problem, where links among nodes must be settled in order to allow an efficient operation of the whole system. At this level, all the problem elements are modeled like black boxes, and the optimal solution determines the nodes allocation and their capacity, and links among nodes. In this work, a new approach is proposed where decisions about plant design are simultaneously made with operational and planning decisions on the supply chain. Thus, tradeoffs between the plant structure and the network design are assessed. The model considers unit duplications and the allocation of storage tanks for plant design. Using different sets of discrete sizes for batch units and tanks, a mixed integer linear programming model (MILP) is attained. The proposed formulation is compared with other non-integrated approaches in order to illustrate the advantages of the presented simultaneous approach.