Green Supply Chain Network Design with Emphasis on Inventory Decisions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a bi-objective non-linear model for green supply chain network design that integrates inventory decisions, and evaluates solution methods through extensive computational and statistical analysis.

Contribution

It presents a novel integrated model combining inventory, location, and routing decisions for sustainable supply chains, along with an evaluation of multiple solution algorithms.

Findings

The exact and evolutionary algorithms effectively solve the model.

Solution methods show statistically significant differences in performance.

The model supports sustainable decision-making in supply chain design.

Abstract

Excessive greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector have led companies to move towards a sustainable supply chain network design. In this study we present a new bi-objective non-linear formulation where multiple inventory components are integrated into the location and routing decisions throughout the supply chain network. To efficiently solve the proposed model, we implement an exact method and four evolutionary algorithms for small and large-scale instances. Extensive computational results and sensitivity analysis are performed to validate the efficiency of the proposed approaches, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Besides, we run a statistical analysis to investigate whether there is any statistically significant difference between solution methods.