DESIGNING A FLEXIBLE DISTRIBUTION NETWORK FOR THE DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN ENVIRONMENT

Abstract

Nowadays, integrated supply chain management has become a serious concern for companies due to the severe competitive market since it is a factor playing a major role in both increasing companies' profitability and creating customer satisfaction. Meanwhile, interest in utilizing information technology in supply chain management and moving towards a digital supply chain to reach a better rank in the industry has rapidly increased. Additionally, the increase in population and the growth of cities leads to the creation of heavy traffic loads bringing difficult challenges to the company's distribution network such as a sharp rise in transportation costs and untimely delivery. On the other hand, having fixed warehouses in the urban area not only is unprofitable for companies but also impossible due to both the increase in costs and the lack of enough space to develop in densely populated and crowded areas. In this paper, a flexible distribution network is designed using the small mobile warehouse's strategy to address the problems raised. Trucks and pickups are considered small mobile warehouses and distribution units in the distribution area, respectively. Wireless sensors are used as an information technology unit in each vehicle to monitor the network condition and make a flexible communication in which all sensors are connected to the processing center located in the organization's building. Consequently, the processing center identifies the optimal points in the distribution area for reloading between small mobile warehouses (trucks) and distribution units (pickups), while minimizing the total cost of network transportation. The applicability of the proposed model is investigated using a case study and sensitivity analyses.