Integrated production and distribution planning for industrial gases supply chains

A challenge in planning the operations of multisite production networks is the need to simultaneously balance production across sites while satisfying customers demand and keeping customer service levels high and overall costs low. Accordingly, we present a planning approach for the simultaneous optimization of production and distribution operations. Specifically, we consider a regional Argon supply chain, comprised of multiple production sites and customers, in which liquid Argon is distributed through tanker trucks under cryogenic conditions. The proposed approach first generates detailed routes and then uses these routes in an integrated model to fully optimize production and distribution. Using a series of case studies, based on industrially inspired data, we show that the proposed approach leads to high quality results for regional networks of real-world sizes.