A New Tactical Optimization Model For Bioenergy Supply Chain
Résumé
Optimization is an important aspect of logistics management. It can reduce significantly logistics costs and also be a good tool for decision support. In this paper, we address a planning problem specific to biomass supply chain. We propose a new mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model dealing with different feedstock production operations such as harvesting, packing, storage, preprocessing and transportation, with the objective of minimizing the total logistic cost of the system on a regional basis. It determines the optimal number of harvesting machines, the fleet size of trucks for transportation and the amount of each type of biomass harvested, stored and preprocessed in each period to satisfy demands of bio-refineries in each period. The effectiveness of the proposed model is illustrated with a numerical example, a case study in Aube (France department), which gives preliminary and interesting results on a small test case.