Corsano G., Guillen-Gosalbez G., Montagna J., 2013, Solution Strategies for the Design and Planning of Supply Chains and Embedded Plants, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 32, 1351-1356.
In this work we present solution strategies for the task of designing supply chains with the explicit consideration of the detailed plant performance of the embedded facilities. Taking as a basis an mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model introduced in a previous work, we propose three solution strategies that exploit the underlying mathematical structure. The strategies are based on bi-level decomposition algorithm and Lagrangean decomposition method. Also, we propose a hybrid approach that takes advantage of both well known strategies, improving the solution obtained by Lagrangean methods. Numerical results show that the bi-level approach works more efficiently than Lagrangean and hybrid decomposition, and lead to significant CPU savings when compared to the full space MILP for large scale problems.