System and method of solving large scale supply chain planning problems with integer constraints

A computer-implemented method of solving supply chain planning problems, comprising:

• accessing, by a computer, a planning problem of a supply chain network stored in a database;
• modeling, by the computer, the planning problem as a network of nodes and edges;
• generating, by the computer, a hierarchical linear programming solution of the planning problem;
• applying, by the computer, advanced heuristics to the generated hierarchical linear programming solution to obtain an integer feasible solution;
• formulating, by the computer, a mixed integer program based on the integer solution to generate an optimized global hierarchical solution;
• and
• storing, by the computer, the generated optimized global hierarchical solution in the database.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium embodied with software for solving supply chain planning problems, the software when executed using one or more computers is configured to:

• access a planning problem of a supply chain network stored in a database;
• model the planning problem as a network of nodes and edges;
• generate a hierarchical linear programming solution of the planning problem;
• apply advanced heuristics to the generated hierarchical linear programming solution to obtain an integer feasible solution;
• formulate a mixed integer program based on the integer solution to generate an optimized global hierarchical solution;
• and
• store the generated optimized global hierarchical solution in the database.