A heuristic approach for integration of supply chain network design and assembly line balancing

Supply chain network (SCN) design problem is one of the vital strategic decision problems that need to be optimized for long term efficient operation of whole supply chain. To construct an agile SCN, capable production processes and supply-distribution processes have to be able to work simultaneously. In this study, a model is discussed for integration of a supply chain network (SCN) design problem is considered as a strategic decision and the assembly line balancing problem is handled as a tactical decision. In the literature, both of these problems are known as NP-hard, so integration of two problems can be considered as NP-hard. Therefore, to find an optimal solution in a desired time period as problem size increases is very difficult. In this thesis, working simultaneously two different swarm intelligence techniques are proposed; a particle swarm optimization algorithm for multi echelon supply chain network and an ant colony optimization algorithm for the assembly line balancing problem. The performance of the proposed heuristic algorithm is investigated using benchmark problems. Finally, obtained results show that proposed heuristic approach is efficient in terms of both of solution quality and computational time.Anahtar Kelimeler :Tedarik zinciri ağ tasarımı, montaj hattı dengeleme, parçacık sürü optimizasyonu, karınca kolonisi optimizasyonu