Planning tools for managing the supply chain

In this paper, we introduce a new way to manage the supply chain. The proposed solution reduces the problem's complexity using a two-stage hierarchical production planning method and is applicable to realistic transportation optimization problems. The approach is based on planning and operations scheduling models, and is designed to minimize travel and production costs within a flexible organizational network. In the aggregate planning phase, a mathematical model involving an aggregation of products, demand and time periods is solved. It is at this initial stage that the size of the problem is reduced and its output is used as input to the detailed phase in order to improve resolution time. The second stage produces a detailed schedule. It is shown that the proposed approach generates good and feasible solutions to practical problems within a reasonable computational time.