Modeling and Solving Material Resources Allocation and Distribution with OR Based and AI Guided Method

Material resources allocation and distribution with national wide is really a complicated problem.It has been shown in practice that neither the traditional OR method nor the AI technology alone could solve the problem satisfyingly. In this paper we propose a new model to describe the problem.Then, we solve this problem using an OR based and AI guided method.Here an AI method is employd to attack ill structured problems and provide a feasible plan as a guidance while OR method is used to find optimal solution of the problem.Corresponding algorithms are developed to support this model.All of these models, algorithms and approach have been implemented in a system called Intelligent Materials Allocatior and Distributor that has been put into practice in China for several years.