A multi-echelon multi-product stochastic model to supply chain of small-and-medium enterprises in industrial clusters

An Industrial Cluster (IC) is a set of similar and interrelated firms in a specific field situated in a geographic concentration to share joint resources. To date, the interrelations between ICs and Supply Chain Management (SCM) have been improperly mathematically studied, despite their inherent relationship. In this paper, a Supply-Demand Hub in Industrial Clusters (SDHIC) as a specific common provider of warehousing and logistics activities managed by a third-party logistics provider (3PL) is proposed to minimize the total cost of the considered supply chain. Activities of businesses in IC is modeled thorough a two-stage stochastic programming model followed by an acceleration techniques for the Benders decomposition. The numerical experiments comprising sensitivity analysis are conducted over a case study to show the attractiveness of the proposed model. Some managerial insights are presented based on the obtained results.