OPTIMIZATION OF THE SUPPLIER SELECTION PROBLEM USING DISCRETE FIREFLY ALGORITHM

In this article I show a firefly optimization based algorithm which helps to choose the appropriate suppliers in a case of given order quantity of a given product. The developed algorithm takes account of the minimum and maximum order quantities at the different suppliers as constraints. It also takes account of the quantity discounts offered by the different suppliers, which can be described as step function. The algorithm takes account of the capacity and the cost of the used transport vehicles too. The article describes the operation of the algorithm and the penalty functions applied. In the last part the firefly algorithm and the solution given by the MS Excel solver’s general reduced gradient and the evolutionary algorithm is compared.