An integrated planning of production and distribution in supply chain management using a multi-level symbiotic evolutionary algorithm

This paper presents a new evolutionary algorithm to solve complex multi-level integration problems, which is called multi-level symbiotic evolutionary algorithm (MEA). The MEA uses an efficient feedback mechanism to flow evolution information between and within levels, to enhance parallel search capability, and to improve convergence speed and population diversity. To show the MEA's applicability, it is applied to the integrated planning of production and distribution in supply chain management. The encoding and decoding methods are devised for the integrated problem. A set of experiments has been carried out, and the results are reported. The superiority of the algorithm's performance is demonstrated through experiments.