Emergency operations scheduling of a supply chain network in disaster reliefs

The present study works on the operations scheduling problem of an emergency supply chain that provides relief goods to affected areas after a disaster. Specifically, we focus on the production and distribution of the disaster relief kit, an emergency package used in disaster relief which includes critical resources for coping with the situation after a disaster. The whole dissertation includes three essays and a simulation chapter. In the first essay, a thorough literature review is conducted which includes two parts. The first part investigates general integrated distribution and production problems (IPDP), and models/solution approaches used to solve these problems. The second part of the literature review is on the emergency supply chain in disaster relief specifically. In this part, both survey papers and papers dealing with specific problems in this field are reviewed. Based on the review, we compare the commercial supply chain and the emergency supply chain in disaster relief, and identify gaps in the research and practice of disaster relief supply chain management. The second and third essays study the specific supply chain network that produces and distributes the disaster relief kits. First of all, a structure is proposed for the supply chain network, assumptions are made, and the general problem of optimally scheduling and operating the supply chain is defined which is NP hard. Following that, the second essay investigates a special variation of the general problem and proves it to be strongly polynomial solvable. In the third essay, the structural properties of the general problem are analyzed, and an LP relaxation based heuristic is proposed to solve the general problem efficiently. The performance of the heuristic is tested through extensive numerical experiments. Finally, we evaluate two policies on the strategic level of the supply chain through simulation. Observations obtained through the simulation studies are used to support the development of managerial policies for the future disaster relief. In this dissertation, the three essays are structured to form a coherent body as described above on the topic of the emergency scheduling operations of a supply chain in disaster relief considering lead time and tardiness penalties.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Hui Don