Scheduling production and transportation in multi-site supply chain simultaneously regarding to exclusive suppliers

Delivering on time is an essential factor for the survival of factories in a competitive environment, which requires planning in the supply chain. Therefore, with the correct planning in the supply chain scheduling, it can leads to reduce the cost, lower prices, customer satisfaction and ultimately leads to competitive advantage for organizations. This study considers the scheduling of production and transportation in two-stage Multi-Site supply chain (MS-SC) regarding geographical zoning and using exclusive suppliers (MSZ-SC). The first stage contains suppliers with different production speeds and ability to produce a particular production. The second stage is composed of vehicles, each of which may have a different speed, capacity and setup time. In fact, 5 major factors that are able to be seen as a value for owners are considered. We have presented a mathematical model for scheduling of this supply chain, and then the model coded by Dynamic Genetic Algorithm (DGA), which is an improved version of genetic algorithm, with MATLAB software. Covering the wide range of problems, 648 random problems are solved reaching reasonable achievement. Experimental results from both model with and without zoning, clearly show that proposed model offers better performance in critical variables. In fact, managers are able to use this planning regarding geographical zoning and exclusiveness to gain competitive advantage by time and consequently cost reduction. Better operation abilities in tow-stage proposed model that is clearly shown, certainly, lead to have merits on managerial decision making.