Supply Network Planning and Plant Scheduling in the Chemical - Pharmaceutical Industry - A Case Study Investigation

In the chemical-pharmaceutical industry, production stages are often assigned to different locations, even different countries. A key issue is the co-ordination of campaign schedules at different production stages in the various plants. In practice, it is almost impossible to determine exact optimal solutions to the corresponding complex supply network problem with respect to overall logistics costs. Hence, a two-stage hierarchical modelling approach is suggested. At the upper level, campaign schedules are determined for the entire supply network. At the lower level, detailed production schedules are derived for each plant. At this stage, the specific requirements of production equipment and other types of resources are considered according to the recipes of the particular chemical process. The applicability of the approach suggested is investigated using a case study from industry.