An integrated approach for sustainable container supply chain design and evaluation — A simulation approach with case study

Abstract

Traditionally, the container is usually regarded as a ‘black box’ in container supply chain design and analysis, which ignores the interactions between container, inner packaging and logistics operations and their impact on sustainability performance of the logistics solution. But according to UK and international insurance organisations, more than half of incidents in container shipping are cargo loss or damage, and more than one third of those value loss incidents are contributed by poorly or incorrect packed containers. Since the packaging related factors are tightly related to container cargo value loss in logistics operations and further influence the sustainability of the container supply chain, this paper introduces packaging logistics concept and risk management tools into container shipping to integrate the packaging, cargo and logistics operation as a holistic system in container supply chain evaluation and design. An integrated framework and approach is proposed in this paper for sustainable container supply chain evaluation and design taking packaging related risks into account. And simulation model is developed to apply this integrated method in container shipping scenario.