A Novel Multi-Objective Model for the Cold Chain Logistics Considering Multiple Effects

Feiyue Qiu,Cheng Wang,Dewei Kong,Ping-Kuo Chen,Yi Pan,Guodao Zhang,Xin Sheng

doi:10.3390/su12198068

Feiyue Qiu, Cheng Wang + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su12198068

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Abstract

This paper focuses on solving a problem of green location-routing with cold chain logistics (GLRPCCL). Considering the sustainable effects of the economy, environment, society, and cargos, we try to establish a multi-objective model to minimize the total cost, the full set of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the average waiting time, and the total quality degradation. Several practical demands were considered: heterogeneous fleet (HF), time windows (TW), simultaneous pickup and delivery (SPD), and a feature of mixed transportation. To search the optimal Pareto front of such a nondeterministic polynomial hard problem, we proposed an optimization framework that combines three multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) and also developed two search mechanisms for a large composite neighborhood described by 16 operators. Extensive analysis was conducted to empirically assess the impacts of several problem parameters (i.e., distribution strategy, fleet composition, and depots’ time windows and costs) on Pareto solutions in terms of the performance indicators. Based on the experimental results, this provides several managerial insights for the sustainale logistics companies.

Highlights

With the development of urbanization and the change of client’s life style, the production and consumption of refrigeration-dependent food have changed, which promote the rapid development of the cold chain-based logistics [1]
If we take into account one of the most innovative way of provide the so-called right to the city [67], i.e., the Barcelona’s Poblenou neighborhood superblocks, it is seen that the most recent studies [68–71] tackling the former industrial heart of the Catalan capital did not take into account the issues this paper shows slightly referred on the impacts on transportation system introduced by superblock unit in Poblenou
Aiming at effectively solving the proposed problem, this paper developed a large composite neighborhood formed by 16 operators, which is grouped into three modules: dominated pool (DP), non-dominated pool (NDP), and mutational pool (MP)

Summary

Introduction

With the development of urbanization and the change of client’s life style, the production and consumption of refrigeration-dependent food have changed, which promote the rapid development of the cold chain-based logistics [1]. Cold chain logistic(CCL), as a special type of transportation logistics, is developed to maintain the freshness of temperature-sensitive products by the thermal and refrigerated packaging methods and logistics plans [2,3]. Wang et al and Ghomi et al [11–13] defined a logistic costs-based formulation for the LRPCCL. The latter two considered lost sale costs. Wang et al [14] proposed a bi-objective model for LRPCCL to minimize the total cost and distribution time. In Leng et al [2], a novel bi-objective model for the LRPCCL was proposed, which handles the cargo quality decay as the second objective. Leng et al [15] developed several novel solution methods (i.e., decomposition-based hyper-heuristic approaches) to solve the bi-objective model proposed by Leng et al [2]

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