An Intelligent Water Drops Algorithm to Supply-Demand Hub in Industrial Cluster Considering Transportation Mode

Industrial Clusters (ICs) are companies that are active in the same commercial section in adjacent geographical area. Several articles have investigated the mathematical structure of ICs under different business rules and objectives. However, There is a dearth of research in mathematical relationship between Supply Chain Management and ICs. To bridge this gap, we propose a multi-echelon supply-distribution model that optimize collaborations of different echelons. The two considered objectives are minimizing the total incurred logistics costs, and maximizing the service level of customers. We solve this problem using the intelligent water drops (IWD) algorithm. We also compare IWD with reference-point based non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-III) and non-dominated ranking genetic algorithm (NRGA). Finally, we illustrate the validity of the proposed approach through experimental results.