A bilinear goal programming model and a modified Benders decomposition algorithm for supply chain reconfiguration and supplier selection

The problem addressed in this paper is related to an aerospace company seeking to change its outsourcing strategies in order to meet the expected demand increase and customer satisfaction requirements regarding delivery dates and amounts. A bilinear goal programming model is developed to achieve the company's objectives. A modified Benders decomposition method is successfully applied to handle bilinear goal programming models in which the complicating binary variables affect the values of the deviational variables of goals attainment. This influence leads to formulate the master and the sub-problem as two goal programming models with different objective function decompositions as compared to the classical Benders one. Computational experiments show that the modified Benders algorithm outperforms a generic linearization method by reaching the optimal solution for larger problem with about 75% reduction in computation time.