2018 年 5 巻 2 号 p. 393-407
When entering an emerging market, an international company may initially focus on establishing production plants and its upstream parts/raw materials supply system, and rely on local sales agents for outbound physical distribution. However, once familiar with the business environment, the international company may consider building up its own distribution system to improve its profit margin and customer service. In this context, for a distribution system of four layers, this study examines the location problem of the distribution center, given the fixed locations of the suppliers, plants, and retailers. In particular, we consider the integration of the supplier-plant and plant-distribution center transportation in this strategic location decision problem. We develop a mixed-integer programming model and design a heuristic solution algorithm based on Lagrangian relaxation. In a numerical experiment, the solution quality is found to be close to optimality, and the computation time is acceptable in terms of strategic decision-making.
