A simple multi-objective optimization approach for material purchasing problem of a railway transportation business

A railway transportation business is characterized by its dispersed location, integrated management style, and huge material requirement. In this business, material purchasing of the whole station system is central governed, the quantity is big, thus unsuitable material decision will induce huge lose. To avoid this, both 'from whom to purchase' and 'how the disseminate routing should be' need to be optimally decided. If we go even further, the whole forepart supply chain structure needs to be wisely designed. Aimed at the problem's character, the authors of this paper give a simple but utility optimization model. The model is based on a linear transportation model (LTM) with its fee parameters synthetically defined by an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to capture the multi-object optimization requirement. According to the authors' rudimental test, the model is easy to operate and works well as an initiation assistance tool in a supply office of a railway transportation business. A concise review of recent research on supply chain optimization is also given in the paper.