A supply chain network design optimization model from the perspective of a retail distribution supply chain

Distribution plays an increasingly important function in delivering value to the consumer. Therefore, organizations need to adopt a holistic view of the entire network. These needs have propelled the modeling of Supply Chain Network Design (SCND) and this study investigates that from the Retail Supply Chain's perspective. The study reports the model formulation of the SCND optimization after carrying out a thorough systematic review of literature. The proposed model can be used for strategic decisions such as determining the correct number of facilities to minimize the total supply chain network costs and selecting the best supplier-retail combination for a retail supply chain network. The objective of this study is to come up with the mathematical model to minimize the total SCND cost considering in a multi-echelon network where, multi suppliers, multi warehouses, multi Distribution Centres (DCs), multi retailer, and multi products are taken into consideration. The proposed model considers a distance among the facilities when considering the multi-echelon network and is validated through several test cases from literature.