Towards an Integrated Production and Outbound Distribution Planning Method

Abstract

The competition on global markets has changed towards a competition between supply chains instead of single competing companies. Thus, optimization approaches like integrated planning of production and outbound distribution comprise multiple companies within a supply chain. This paper provides requirements towards an integrated planning method and highlights the differents with existing integrated planning approaches. Additionally, this contribution presents a concept for a new integrated planning and outbound distribution planning method. This planning method provides an improved integration of the sub-problems production and transportation planning. The paper also presents the operating principle of the new integrated planning method and identifies relevant research questions for further development.