Patent ID: 7343311

Claim:
A method for generating an optimized supplier allocation plan, comprising: identifying a plurality of parts associated with an allocation problem, the allocation problem having a demand requirement associated with the plurality of parts; identifying a plurality of suppliers, each supplier operable to supply at least one part associated with the allocation problem; selecting one or more objective functions, each objective function having a plurality of part variables, each part variable representing a quantity of a part to be procured from a supplier; receiving at least one constraint constraining at least one part variable; optimizing the one or more objective functions with respect to the at least one constraint to yield a value for each part variable by: optimizing a first objective function to determine a first normalization factor; optimizing a second objective function to determine a second normalization factor; generating a combined objective function using the first objective function normalized by the first normalization factor and weighted by a first weighting factor and using the second objective function normalized by the second normalization factor and weighted by a second weighting factor; and determining if the combined objective function can be optimized for all constraints; responsive to a determination that the combined objective function cannot be optimized for all constraints, optimizing the combined objective function for a portion of the constraints; responsive to a determination that the combined objective function can be optimized for all constraints, optimizing the combined objective function; and determining a quantity of each part to be procured from at least one supplier according to the values to generate the optimized supplier allocation plan.