solving a mathematical model with multi warehouses and retailers in distribution network by a simulated annealing algorithm

determination of shipment quantity and distribution problem is an important subject in today’s business. this paper describes the inventory/distribution network design. the system addresses a class of distribution network design problem, which is characterized by multiple products family, multiple warehouses and retail-ers. the maximum capacity of vehicles and warehouses are also known. the resulting system focuses on two key goals: minimizing the lost sales cost as a costumer’s satisfaction factor and balancing sum of service dis-tances for different warehouses. in this paper we consider the distribution network problem formulated by 0-1 mixed integer linear programming model. due to difficulty of obtaining the optimum solution in medium and large scale problems, a simulated annealing algorithm (sa) is also applied. the efficiency of this algorithm is demonstrated by comparing its numerical experiment results with those of sa algorithm and lingo 6. package.