TY - JOUR ID - 71360 TI - Optimal Solution in a Constrained Distribution System JO - International Journal of Engineering JA - IJE LA - en SN - 1025-2495 AU - Taimury, E. AU - Modarres-Yazdi, M. AD - , Iran University of Science & Technology AD - Industrial Engineering, Sharif University of Technology Y1 - 2002 PY - 2002 VL - 15 IS - 2 SP - 179 EP - 190 KW - Production/Inventory KW - Constrained problems KW - Separable Programming KW - Supply chain KW - nested DO - N2 - We develop a method to obtain an optimal solution for a constrained distribution system with several items and multi-retailers. The objective is to determine the procurement frequency as well as the joint shipment interval for each retailer in order to minimize the total costs. The proposed method is applicable to both nested and non-nested policies and ends up with an optimal solution. To solve this large nonlinear and integer problem, a two-level algorithm is proposed. In the first level, the functional constraints are relaxed and a solution is obtained by taking advantage of its special structure. Then, we apply separable programming technique for finding the optimal solution of the original problem. To decrease the size of the problem, some appropriate bounds on variables are introduced. We will show that under some conditions, the optimal solution of the original problem is proportional with the solution of its unconstrained problem. UR - https://www.ije.ir/article_71360.html L1 - https://www.ije.ir/article_71360_8fe874907c09fcb7ff26a61c4d922a0e.pdf ER -