DecisionMakinginMultiobjectiveProductionDistributionSystems

1
2
PanickerV.V. andSreeramK.Y.

Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Calicut, India

Email:vinay@nitc.ac.in

Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Calicut, India

Email:sreeramtlpd@gmail.com

Abstract: This paper addresses a multi objective production distribution problem to

minimize both total weighted tardiness and total distribution cost. It is a NP hard problem and
consisting two objectives. The first one is to sequence the orders on a production line such
that it will decrease tardiness of orders and the second one is to send those orders by
considering routing and heterogeneous fleet of vehicles if possible thereby distribution cost is
decreased. Being an NP hard problem it is difficult to obtain an optimal solution by exact
enumeration methods such as Branch and bound. To solve the above problem this paper
proposes a clonal selection algorithm. This algorithm uses several strategies for generating
the initial population and selecting the individuals for reproduction. Different mutation
operators are also utilized for reproducing new individuals. Initially using mathematical
model solved by using branch and bound tests the algorithm. Then the same algorithm is
extended for considering routing between customers and heterogeneous fleet of vehicles by
considering objectives in the form of scalarization. At the end in order to have diverse set of
solutions those are suitable for environment prevailing at customers site pareto optimal
analysis is done.
1. INTRODUCTION
The competition increases for every organization irrespective of the products they
manufacture or the service they provide. In order to withstand in the competitive environment
merely meeting customer expectations doesnt make the enterprise market leader; rather the
enterprise must exceed the customer expectation in terms of variety and service aspects such
as product cost and timely delivery.
In manufacturing industries such as electronics and automobile, the distribution cost
becomes one of the major cost component and with the advent of JIT philosophy in
manufacturing (Lean Manufacturing), timely delivery to the customer becomes one of the
challenging aspect. This paper considers multi-objective of minimizing both the distribution
cost and timely delivery. In order to have minimum distribution cost and timely delivery it is
critical to integrate both production and distribution functions of a supply chain.
In make-to-order environment, the problem of production-distribution system
involves minimizing the objectives like total distribution costs and total weighted tardiness.
Customers place orders to manufacturers; by receiving their orders, manufacturer selects a
strategy that minimizes the distribution costs and dispatches the orders to customers without
much exceeding the due date considering the weight associated with customer. In order to
minimize the distribution cost, the manufacturer sends his orders with heterogeneous fleet of
vehicles in such a way that one vehicle to one customer or by one vehicle to more than one
customer based on volume of orders i.e., routing from manufacturer to customers is
considered.
In the present work, two objectives considered are total weighted tardiness and total

distribution cost. Total weighted tardiness is summation of the product of tardiness and
weight of each order and total distribution cost is the summation of the distribution cost of the
vehicle to which orders are assigned. Initially a mathematical model is adopted from Cakici
et al. 2011 and solve that model using LINGO 11.0 an optimization modeling software for
linear, nonlinear and integer programming. Global optimum solution is obtained for number
of orders is quite less. Whenever the order size increases because of its solution method is
Branch and Bound algorithm in which effort requires grows exponentially with problem size
it is unable to give optimal solution in reasonable time. To solve the problems in which
number of orders is high, Clonal Selection Algorithm from the suite of artificial immune
systems algorithms that is inspired by the Clonal selection theory of acquired immunity is
used. The results obtained from the algorithm are compared with the results given by LINGO
11.0.
This paper focuses on the development of a solution for multi-objective productiondistribution system. The remaining part of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2
provides a literature review of the recent work on production-distribution systems. Section 3
presents the solution methodology using both LINGO and Clonal selection algorithm. Section
4 presents the results and discussion. The paper is concluded in Section 5 with limitations of
study and further scope.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
Production distribution problem considered in this paper is an NP hard problem. This
problem is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming problem. But exact methods
are not used for their inefficient and expensive computations. Several researchers have
studied the decision problems in production-distribution systems. Cakici et al. 2011 consider
minimization of total distribution costs and total weighted tardiness as objective function. A
pareto optimal solution method using a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm is applied to
get an optimal solution for the multi-objective optimization problem. Steinrcke, 2011
presents minimization of production cost, transportation cost, and bonus payments. A mixedinteger decision-making model by relaxing and/or fixing is used to formulate and solve the
multi objective optimization problem.
Pundoor and Chen, 2005 consider minimization of maximum delivery tardiness and
total distribution cost as the objective function. A fast heuristic is developed for solving the
multi objective problem. Hall and Potts, 2003 analyze minimization of total flow time and
total distribution cost. A dynamic programming algorithm is used to solve the multi objective
problem. Vanbuer et al. 1999 consider production distribution problem with minimization of
cost of owning trucks and operating costs. The problem is solved using heuristic search
algorithms.
This paper considers a production-distribution problem described in Cakici et al, 2011
and further extended to routing and heterogeneous fleet of vehicles. Exact methods are,
however, generally not very useful when a problem complexity is high. If heuristic methods
have been proposed the major disadvantage of heuristic methods is the possibility of
terminating at a local optimum that is far distant from the global optimum. A meta-heuristic
method clonal selection algorithm is proposed in this paper. Many authors used these
artificial immune systems algorithms for solving operational decision problems. Khalid et al,
2013 uses AIS to solve fixed charge transportation problem by considering distribution cost
as their objective. Agarwal et al, 2003 uses clonal selection algorithm for solving resource
constraint project scheduling problem by considering only one objective makespan. Engin

and Doyen, 2005 used clonal selection algorithm to solve hybrid flow shop scheduling
problem by considering makespan as objective. Bagheri et al, 2010 uses artificial immune
systems algorithm as a solution methodology for flexible job shop scheduling problem.
Collelo and Cortes, 2005 uses artificial immune systems algorithm to solve a multi objective
optimization problem. In the present work the ideas for solving multi-objective optimization
problem are adapted from the previous discussed papers.
3. SOLUTION METHODOLOGY
Initially a mathematical model is adopted from Cakici et al. (2011). The model is
solved using an optimization modeling software for linear, nonlinear and integer
programming, LINGO 11.0. Global optimum solution is obtained for small size problems
with the number of orders being less. Since LINGO software applies the solution method of
branch and bound algorithm, as the order size increases the computation time grows
exponentially with problem size. Hence, it is unable to provide an optimal solution in
reasonable time (Sreeram et al. 2013).
In this work, for medium and large size problems with more number of orders, a
Clonal Selection Algorithm from the suite of artificial immune systems algorithms is applied.
The algorithm is inspired from the Clonal selection theory of acquired immunity. Few ideas
from Coello and Cortes (2002) on the Clonal Selection Algorithm have been extended to the
multi-objective optimization in this work. For validation, the solutions obtained from the
algorithm are compared with that given by LINGO 11.0.
3.1 Problem Environment
In this work, an integrated production distribution problem with one manufacturer and
more than one customer is considered. A customer is allowed to place more than one order.
The orders are received by a manufacturer and processed on a single production line, and
delivered to customers by capacitated homogenous fleet of vehicles based on number of
orders given by each customer. Whenever one customer places more than one order, the
manufacturer ships those orders in one capacitated vehicle. There exist an infinite number of
vehicles and a variable transportation cost incurs for each delivery based on transportation
time. Each order is associated with a customer, weight (penalty for tardy jobs), processing
time, due time, and size (volume or storage space required in the transportation unit). The
vehicle capacity is defined as the maximum total size of the jobs that can be delivered
together. Transportation times are also considered in addition to the processing times.
The objectives considered in this work are conflicting in nature i.e., optimizing one objective
leads to worsen the other. By delivering each order using one capacitated vehicle minimizes
the total weighted tardiness and at the same time number of vehicles used for distributing
goods to customer increases which leads to increase distribution cost. On other hand one
capacitated vehicle is used to distribute goods to more than one customer total distribution
cost objective decreases but tardiness of each order increases eventually total weighted
tardiness objective gets worsen. In order to make a better compromise between these two
objectives Pareto optimality is used and developed diverse set of solutions. The Selection of
solution is depends on high-level information available with decision maker and conditions
prevailing in decision makers environment.
3.1.1 Assumptions

These are assumptions considered at the time of solving the above problem. Out of
which first few scheduling assumptions are taken from Pinedo (2002). These are considered
only to subside the complexity of problem without loss of generality. Those are
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

All the orders are available at time zero.

The machines are available throughout the scheduling period.
The processing times are known and deterministic.
The manufacturer processes all orders in a single production line.
An order once taken up is completed fully before the next order is taken.
Average velocity of all vehicles moving is same.
There is no limitation on number of vehicles and a homogeneous fleet of
vehicles is used.
8. A separate trip from manufacturer to customer is assigned to each order
without visiting any other location.
9. Minimum capacity of vehicle is greater than or equal to maximum volume of
order
10. Size of the job is assumed to be constant for representing vehicle capacity
11. The capacity of all vehicles is greater than the sum of all volume of orders
3.2 Clonal selection algorithm
The following provides an overview of the steps of the CLONALG algorithm. The same is
adopted from De castro and Von Zuben (2000) shown below in Fig. 4.5.
1. Initialization: The first step of the CLONALG technique is initialization, which
involves preparing an antibody pool of fixed size N.
2. Antigen presentation: The algorithm then proceeds by executing a number of
iterations of exposing the system to all known antigens.
a. Affinity evaluation: Present it to the population P and determine its
affinity with each element of the population
b. Clonal selection and expansion: Select n highest affinity elements of and
add those to memory. Generate clones proportional to their affinity with
the antigen.
c. Affinity maturation: Mutate each clone such that high affinity clone gets
mutated at high rate. Add mutated individuals to population P. Reselect
best individual to be kept as memory m of the antigen presented
d. Meta-dynamics: Replace a number r of individuals with low affinity with
randomly generated new ones.
3. Cycle: Repeat step 2 until a certain stopping criteria is met.

(3)
Ab{d}
Ab{n}

(2d)
Re-select

(2c)

Ab

(1)

(2a)

Select

Ab{n}

(2b)

C*

Clone

Maturate

Figure 3.1: Flow chart for clonal selection algorithm

The same steps described above are implemented in this work as follows
3.2.1 Initialization:
The first step in meta-heuristic based clonal selection algorithm is antibody
generation. Usually antibodies are used to represent the solution. A row matrix represents
solution representation of these classes of problems. The idea of antibody representation and
encoding and decoding of antibody are adopted from Bagheri et al.,(2010) and Agarwal et al.,
(2007).
The proposed solution representation consists of two parts
1. Tardiness representation
2. Distribution cost representation
The Tardiness representation consists of sequence in which orders are to be processed
on a production line. It contains N number of columns that is equal to the number of orders
and these are generated randomly by permutation of row matrix consists of 1 to n numbers.
This tardiness representation is used to calculate total weighted tardiness objective.
The Distribution cost representation consists of N number of columns because the
maximum number of trucks (vehicles) needed is equal to number of orders (N) because the
volume of order placed by customer is less than minimum capacity vehicle. Each column
represents one truck and the number in the column signifies the number of orders assigned to
that truck by random assignment. But in this case of without routing each order is dispatched
by a separate vehicle. Then every column is assigned a value one. If routing is considered i.e.,
more than one order is accommodated in one vehicle the number presents in the column may
assume greater than one also.
For every antibody representation first N columns represent tardiness representation
and remaining N columns represents distribution cost representation. So, the order of row
matrix used for antibody representation is 1 2N. The figure shown below is a random
antibody present in the initialization. The below figure 3.3 shows proposed antibody
representation

Figure 3.3 Proposed solution representation for the production-distribution problem

From the tardiness representation it is found that first order is processed first and second
order is processed next to first order and so on till all orders processing is completed. The
first column in distribution cost representation signifies that first order is assigned to first
vehicle. Second vehicle is no assigned and second order is assigned to third vehicle having
respective capacity. Orders 3 and 4 are assigned to fourth vehicle and so on till all orders are
assigned to vehicles.
3.2.2 Affinity evaluation:
Affinity evaluation means calculation of objective function values using N
antibodies generated randomly. In the present work with the virtue of two objectives having
different kind of representation it is possible to generate N2 number of antibodies using the N
antibodies. Each tardiness representation is extended with N distribution cost representation.
By this way the diversity of antibodies are increased in search space. This is shown in the
following example
For example consider two randomly generated antibodies for five customers each places one
order to a manufacturer. The randomly generated antibodies and total number of antibodies
generated using two antibodies are shown below in Table 4.1.
Table 3.1 Example considered to explain possible antibodies generated using initial ones
Tardiness representation

Distribution cost representation

Table 3.2 New antibodies possible from initially random generated ones
Tardiness representation

Distribution cost representation

After generating all possible combinations of two halves of antibodies calculate both the
objectives.
3.2.3 Cloning or Proliferation:

It is the selection of high affinity antibodies from the pool generated randomly and
clone each antibody yi number of times depends on its rank. The value of y i can be obtained
from the relation given below
N

yi
0.5

i
Where,

multiplying factor,
N
number of antibodies,
i
rank of antibody,
yi
number of clones generated by ith rank antibody.
Total number of clones generated will be given by the following
N
N

Nc
0.5

i
i1
Select the first Nc non-dominated antibodies for the cloning. Before selecting them from the
pool of antibodies first delete the repeated antibodies and/or delete the antibodies pertaining
to the same objective function values if found. Otherwise we cannot get any non-dominated
antibodies because the non-dominated sorting of antibodies is done with respect to the
objective function values if objectives of the pairs of antibodies are same those are neither
dominate nor non-dominate each other.
If the number of non-dominated antibodies of rank 1 is less than Nc then consider the
non-dominated antibodies of lowest ranks till the number of antibodies is equal to Nc. All
these Nc number of antibodies are added to the memory. Rank the antibodies present in the
memory with respect to the objective function values then clone the each antibody y i number
of times. Thereafter affinity maturation is performed on all cloned antibodies.
3.2.4 Hypermutation:
It is the process in which one or more elements in the antibody are changed from its previous
form there by the objective function value will change. From the mutation the solutions,
which are present near to the variable space are traced. In the present work five types of
mutation processes are used because it is difficult to get minimum cost antibody from the
cloned one.
Five types of mutation processes used are
1. Inverted mutation
2. Pair wise exchange mutation
3. Insertion mutation
4. Displacement mutation
5. Shift mutation
In all the above mutation processes tardiness representation and distribution cost
representation are mutated separately. If both are mutated together in any mutation process
the elements from one representation are replaced by the elements of other representation
then antibody loses its feasibility. All these mutation process are done for each cloned
antibody. A common method of preforming mutation is by generating random numbers. Here
the random number generation with discrete uniform distribution between 1 and N in case of
tardiness representation and between 1 and mx in case of distribution cost representation.
Because of mutation if the feasibility of antibody is lost then making the antibody feasible by
take one order from the overloaded vehicle and assign it to a vehicle that is not assigned yet
and of least cost among the vehicles not assigned. This procedure is continued till all the

vehicles assigned will satisfy vehicle capacity.

The above steps are followed by affinity evaluations, reselection of matured clones
and metadynamics are performed. In reselection the affinity of antibodies after hypermutation
are compared with the parent ones. If superior antibody is found then replace the parent one
with the new antibody. At the end of the each iteration the antibodies that are present in the
memory are potential antibodies for the next iteration and remaining number of antibodies are
generated randomly.
3.3 Multi objective optimization
Multi-objective optimization (MOO) is a discipline its application areas range widely
from resource allocation, transportation, and investment decisions to mechanical engineering,
chemical engineering, and automation applications. In contrast to single-objective
optimization, in which only one objective function is considered, MOO considers multiple
objective functions simultaneously and seeks to identify a set of optimal solutions which are
defined as Pareto-optimal solutions. A solution is considered to belong to the Pareto-optimal
set when there is no other solution that can improve at least one of the optimization objectives
without deteriorating any other objective. This set of solutions forms a Pareto front when
plotted on the objective space.
The main concept of MOO is to evaluate two or more conflicting objectives against
each other and obtain the Pareto-optimal solutions and the Pareto front. This comparison of
the solutions is executed on the basis of the basis of the domination concept in which a
solution S1 is said to dominate solution S2 if S1 is no worse than S2, with respect to all
optimization objectives, and where S1 is strictly better than S2 in at least one optimization
objective. A simple method of handling a MOO problem is to form a composite objective
function as the weighted sum of the conflicting objectives that is used in previous two
chapters. Since the weight for an objective is proportional to the preference factor assigned to
that specific objective, this method is also called the preference-based strategy (Deb, 2001).
Apparently, preference-based MOO is simple to apply, because by scalarizing an objective
vector into a single composite objective function (e.g., combining all performance measures
into a weighted average objective function to represent the overall system cost), a MOO
problem can be converted into a single-objective optimization problem and, thus, a single
trade-off optimal solution can be sought effectively. However, the major drawback is that the
trade-off solution obtained by using this procedure is very sensitive to the relative preference
vector. Therefore, the choice of the preference weights and thus the obtained trade-off
solution is highly subjective to the particular decision maker. At the same time, it is also
argued that using preference-based MOO to obtain a single global optimal solution for
multi-objective problemis not desirable. From the steps given below a decision maker can
choose the most suitable configuration among the trade-off solutions generated.
1. Formulation of multi-objective problem
2. Multi-objective optimization
3. Trade-off solutions
4. High level user information
5. Selection of solution

The procedure described above is explained in explained in next section by considering an

example.
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Initially, a mathematical model is adopted from Cakici et al. 2011 and is solved using LINGO
11.0. by scalarization technique. Whenever the order size increases, the effort grows
exponentially with problem size because Branch and bound algorithm is used as solution
procedure in Lingo. It is difficult to get an optimal solution whenever the problem size is
increases. Hence population based Clonal selection algorithm is used to solve the above
discussed problem by using scalarization technique for the same mathematical model. In the
next step of work the same problem is extended for routing between customers and
heterogeneous fleet of vehicles. This is followed by solving the above problem on which
routing and heterogeneous fleet concepts are imposed is solved by for pareto optimal
solutions by relaxing the assumptions imposed in case of scalarization technique.
The illustrative example used is generated randomly following discrete uniform
distribution. Ranges for each attribute are shown in Table 4.1. The modification in this
chapter is the consideration of heterogeneous fleet of vehicles. Therefore the vehicle
capacities are generated randomly following discrete uniform distribution. This is shown in
Table 4.2 and remaining attributes are remains same. Transportation times from one customer
to another are randomly generated following discrete uniform distribution. Its range is shown
in Table 4.1 and those times are shown in Table 4.3
Table 4.1 Inputs generation
Sl no.
1
2
3
4
5

Attribute
Penalty of orders (weight)
Volume of orders (size)
Transportation time from manufacturer to customer
Processing time of order
Vehicle capacity

Input generation
DU [1,10]
DU [1,25]
DU [1,100]
DU [1,10]
DU [50,150]

Order due times are generated from a discrete uniform distribution

DU[(pmin+tmin),/2((pmin+pmax)n+(tmin+tmax))], where pmin and pmax are the minimum and
maximum processing times, and likewise tmin and tmax are the minimum and maximum
transportation times. Three different levels of the due time tightness factor and were
investigated (0.5, 1, and 1.5).
In this work the distribution is assumed to have two components one is fixed cost and another
is variable cost. Fixed cost is assumed to be same as vehicle capacity and variable cost is
assumed to be the product of cost per unit transportation time and transportation time taken to
reach customer from the manufacturer by fallowing the route specified. Cost per unit
transportation is assumed as Rs 1 per unit time. Unit time because all vehicles are assumed to
have same average speed. The idea of fixed, variable costs and different vehicle capacity are
based of Choi and Tcha (2007),WassanandOsman(2002).
Table 4.2: Illustrative example
Attributes

10

Weight

10

Processing times

Transportation time
between manufacturer
and customer

45

68

64

31

63

63

43

80

62

75

Due date

50

39

18

38

94

48

72

37

19

Volume of order

10

18

19

21

23

13

15

10

Vehicle capacity

80

89

77

101

81

58

147

148

107

57

Table 4.3 Transportation time from one customer to another

Solution for the above-considered example by considering both vehicle routing and
heterogeneous fleet of vehicles are for 20 problem instances. The problem without
considering routing is used so as to validate the clonal selection algorithm developed for this
problem and verify whether it is working correctly or not, in comparison with LINGO 11.0.
Later the same problem with routing only and both heterogeneous fleet of vehicles and
routing are considered. The objective values by using scalarization method is compared with
without routing problem. The objective function values for the production distribution
problem solved by using LINGO 11.0 without considering routing and heterogeneous fleet of
vehicles and by considering the routing and heterogeneous fleet of vehicles and solved by
Clonal selection algorithm are tabulated in table 4.4

Table 4.4: Comparison of objective function value between Lingo and Algorithm

Sl.
no.

Number
of
orders

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14

Objective
function
value using
LINGO 11.0
1715
1403
2480
3550
2618
3361
3025
3164
3803
4442

Objective
function
value
using
Algorithm
1072
1039
1824
2815
1786
2032
1685
2482
2374
3166

Sl.
no.

Number
of
orders

11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20

15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24

Objective
function
value using
LINGO 11.0
4026
3337
4676
6233
4097
5653
4246
6850
8707
7887

Objective
function
value
using
Algorith
m
2950
2198
3193
4568
1832
4126
3152
4075
5140
5340

The production distribution problem with routing and heterogeneous fleet of vehicles solved
by using CLONALG is compared with the same problem with homogeneous fleet that is
solved by using LINGO tabulated in shown in table 4.4. The problem is tested for objective
function value and computational times taken to reach convergence are plotted.
In the Figure 4.1 the objective function values of production distribution problem by
homogeneous and heterogeneous fleet of vehicles by considering routing is plotted for 20
problem instances. From the figure it is concluded there is significant difference in objective
function value between both the cases.

Objective function values

LINGO Objecctive function
values
Algorithm Objective
function values

Figure 4.1: Comparing the objective function values for homogeneous (LINGO) and heterogeneous fleet of
vehicles

From the objective function values given in Table 6.12 for 20 problem instances generated
using Table 4.1.
Figure 4.2 shows how the computational time required to reach the convergence is
varying with the increase in number of orders. From the figure it is concluded that the amount
of computational required reaching convergence shows an increasing trend. The maximum

amount of time required is more than the maximum amount of time required in last two
cases.

Figure 4.2: Number of Orders Vs Computational time to reach convergence

This is because, for heterogeneous fleet of vehicles there are number of vehicles available
with different capacities. After assigning orders to vehicles randomly each vehicle is checked
for whether it is satisfying capacity or not. When the volume of orders assigned to vehicle is
less than vehicle capacity it is satisfied otherwise pick one order from overloaded vehicle and
assigns it to other vehicle. This process is done till all vehicles satisfy vehicle capacity. This
process will take some more time than the time taken by CLONALG with homogeneous
fleet.
After observing above cases pareto optimality analysis is carried on to the above problem by
considering total weighted tardiness objective in time units and total distribution cost
objective in monetary units.
Table 4.5 Pareto optimal solutions
Sl no

Pareto optimal solutions

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13

1 2 5 7 9 8 4 6 3 10 3 0 3 0 1 2 0 0 0 1
1 2 5 7 9 8 4 6 3 10 0 0 6 0 0 1 0 0 0 3
1 2 5 7 9 8 4 6 3 10 3 0 3 0 0 2 0 0 0 2
1 2 5 7 9 8 4 6 3 10 0 0 3 0 0 4 0 0 0 3
5 4 3 8 7 9 1 10 2 6 1 0 3 0 0 4 0 0 0 2
4 8 7 10 9 6 1 2 5 30 0 2 0 0 4 0 0 0 4
7 9 8 4 5 10 1 3 6 20 0 3 0 0 3 0 0 0 4
5 7 4 9 8 10 2 6 3 1 1 1 1 2 1 0 1 2 1 0
5 4 8 7 9 1 2 10 6 31 2 2 0 2 1 0 0 0 2
5 4 8 7 9 1 2 10 6 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
5 4 8 7 9 1 2 10 6 3 1 2 0 1 2 1 0 1 2 0
5 4 8 7 9 1 2 10 6 3 1 2 0 2 1 0 1 1 2 0
4 3 1 5 2 6 7 10 9 8 0 0 2 0 0 4 0 0 0 4

Affinity values
TWT
TDC
3093.0
731.0
4739.0
520.0
3408.0
665.0
4291.0
530.0
3158.0
699.0
3500.0
597.0
3752.0
556.0
2431.0
1312.0
2562.0
871.0
2382.0
1539.0
2512.0
1154.0
2462.0
1212.0
3900.0
534.0

The curve generated using the above Pareto optimal solutions is called Pareto optimal front.
Pareto optimal solutions obtained from CLONALG is shown in Figure 4.3 and Pareto optimal
front is shown in Figure 4.4.

Figure 4.3: Pareto optimal solutions

Figure 4.4 Pareto optimal front

In this case there is no concept of objective function value because both objectives are not in
different units that is first one total weighted tardiness is in time units and total distribution
cost in monetary units. Here multi objective analysis is used that is explained in section 3.2.
In order to select the better solution among the Pareto optimal solutions shown in Table 4.5
high level information is required. That is usually the information from the top management.
Otherwise all solutions are having equal priority.
In order to show how priority is given to one solution rather than other here some
cases are considered. For example in the manufacturers premises only five types of vehicles
are available those are described as very small, small, medium, large, and very large and
these will accommodate orders 1,2,3,4,and 6 orders respectively.
Case 1: Manufacturer wants to send orders as early as possible without much
tardiness. Obviously the distribution cost becomes more. Out of the Pareto optimal
solutions shown in Table 4.5, solutions 8 and 10 will be better which satisfies this
scenario than any other solution.
Case 2: Manufacturer want to minimize his distribution cost to the lowest possible
value. In this case obviously the tardiness becomes more. Out of the Pareto optimal
solutions shown in Table 4.5, solutions 2 and 4 will be better which satisfies this
scenario than any other solution.
Case 3: If the manufacturer has only very small and small vehicles available then, out
of the Pareto optimal solutions shown in Table 4.5, solutions 8,11 and 12 will be
better which satisfies this scenario than any other solution.
Hence, the manufacturer is having a flexibility to select a solution based on the circumstances
prevailing at the manufacturers site.

5. CONCLUSIONS AND FURTHER SCOPE OF STUDY:

This work analyzes a multi-objective optimization problem with two objectives namely, total
weighted tardiness and total distribution cost. The mathematical model of a productiondistribution system is developed using optimization software LINGO 11.0.
The advantage with the modeling adopted in the present study is that an optimal
solution is obtained in reasonable time when number of orders to manufacturer is less.
In order to obtain a feasible solution-using LINGO, two dummy orders each at start
and at end of all the attributes of orders is to assume. If not, the number of unknown variables
and number of equations are different, leads to an unsolvable for the LINGO solver. Every
time adding two dummy orders, increases the number of orders by two. As the number of
orders received is high, the time taken to obtain an optimum solution also increases.
To solve the problem instances with more number of orders artificial immune systems
based Clonal selection algorithm is used. By using this algorithm, the work has been carried
out in three phases.
The first phase of the work is validation of algorithm using mathematical model
programmed in LINGO 11.0. In the second phase the vehicle routing is introduced and
compare the second phase with the first phase. From the results it is concluded that with the
vehicle routing there are some cost savings obtained. In the previous two steps both
objectives are evaluated in monetary terms. It makes the problem single objective although
both objectives are conflicting in nature.
Finally in the third phase, the heterogeneous fleet of vehicles are introduced and both
objectives are considered individually with their usual units i.e., tardiness in time units and
distribution cost in monetary terms. Being both the objectives are conflicting in nature multiobjective analysis is done and Pareto optimal curves are drawn.
The study is not free from limitations. The limitation of this study is that, all jobs
manufactured by the manufacturer are assumed to be same size. The scope for further
research in the area of production-distribution system includes:

One manufacturer receives multiple orders but there can be multiple customers
with multiple manufacturers.
In this study, all jobs manufactured by the manufacturer is assumed to be of same
size but there is a possibility of considering an effective unit size.
One vehicle is used only once, if the use of that vehicle is advantage

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