A review on heuristic approaches to solve coordinated production - distribution problems

In the current competitive environment, companies need to be highly efficient in meeting customer demand at lower operational costs. As a result, companies are compelled to seek various ways to enhance their operations. Researchers realised that optimization of various departments separately would not guarantee overall optimization. This led the Researchers to focus on the effect of integrated approach and proven significant cost reduction on the overall operational costs. This paper provides a review on coordinated models in the literature and the role of heuristic approaches to solve such coordinated models. The review found that genetic algorithm plays a vital role in solving complex coordinated problems. The article also identifies the areas that are rarely addressed in coordinated models and genetic algorithms.