A three-echelon green supply chain management for biodegradable products with three transportation modes

Abstract

Currently, many industries are trying to save the environment by following government rules to reduce global warming issues. In this study, green supply chain management with less pollution for biodegradable products is developed and an outsourcing strategy is included only to control the quality of the finished bio-products which would be delivered to the multi-retailer. Three different transportation modes are proposed for products to identify the mode that causes the least carbon emissions through a single setup but an unequal number of shipments and lots. These products have specific properties that can be recycled after use and do not contain harmful chemicals that can negatively impact the environment. The demand pattern of this product is service level dependent; however, the demand during lead time duration is followed a normal distribution. The proposed model considers a distribution free approach with known mean and standard deviation. The model is analytically solved to obtain a quasi-closed-form optimum solution. A numerical example is illustrated to test the performance of the proposed model. Some special cases are considered in this study. In addition, several managerial insights are provided. A sensitivity analysis is conducted to help the industry move toward this fruitful strategy in the future. The numerical study proves that the proposed method is superior to existing research models in different aspects for the pollution reduction strategies. The transportation by road provides ten percentage reduced costs comparing with water and air mode transportation. For both cases, the service level is much better in the transportation by road than other two modes.