A mathematical model for pollution and cost optimised logistics based on environmental vehicle standards for SMEs

Abstract

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) operate in complex supply and logistics systems. Most of the optimisation issues in such logistics arrangements are focused on minimising cost and time. But with rising environmental concerns, sustainable and green solutions have become important criteria along with other optimisation issues. This paper aimed to provide a solution for greening the supply chain by minimising the vehicular pollutant emission through prioritising the use of better environmental standard vehicles. The paper proposed a pollution optimisation model to reduce the pollutant emission and a cost optimisation model to minimise the transportation cost in the logistics of SMEs. The work also compared minimised cost logistics and cost of the minimised pollution logistics for analysing the difference of cost in greening the supply chain. Solution methodology used Timsort-based algorithm implemented by C++ to solve the model, and the problem is analysed over a test case for model estimation.