Fuzzy approach to multi echelon multi objective supply chain system

In today?s marketing conditions, the importance of supply chain management has been improving gradually. An effective supply chain management provides to companies competitive superiority and adaptation capability against unstable marketing conditions.In literature, the decision making problems which are dealing with the various areas of supply chain are encountered and solution methodologies of these problems are increasing gradually.The nature of decision making problems includes uncertainty and the difficulties of finding solution for decision making problems are known. Fuzzy set theory which is heavily used by researchers, a very effective tool to overcome these uncertainties.In supply chain (SC) network, optimizing the process which starts with the supply of raw materials, production in facilities and delivering to the customers by appropriate delivery agents is a very important problem.The problems such as optimizing the costs, taking the right investment decisions, meeting customer demands etc. are the most common problems in supply chain networks.In this study we proposed a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model, took decisions for warehouse and distribution centers? locations and the distribution of product quantities in a multi echelon supply chain network.The solution for multi-objective linear modelling is obtained by utilizing Zimmerman?s min operator with a fuzzy approach in which the minimum satisfactions of objectives are maximized. The model is to determine the locations of warehouses, distribution centers and distribution quantity on the network. In implementation section, in order to demonstrate applicability of our proposed multi-objective linear model, we used supply chain network data of a company which produces cleaning materials.Key words: Supply chain management, Multi-objective linear programming, Fuzzy decision making.YILDIZ TECHNICAL UNIVERSITYGRADUATE SCHOOL OF NATURAL AND APPLIED SCIENCES