Bi-objective optimization approach to the design and planning of supply chains: Economic versus environmental performances

Abstract

Traditionally the design of supply chains has been based on economic objectives. However, as societal environment concerns grows, environmental aspects are also emerging at academic and industry levels as decisive factors within the supply chain management context. The investment towards logistics structures that considers both economic and environmental performances is nowadays an important and current research topic. This paper addresses the planning and design of supply chain structures for annual profit maximization, while considering environmental aspects. The latter are accounted for through the Eco-indicator methodology. Profit and environmental impacts are balanced using an optimization approach adapted from symmetric fuzzy linear programming (SFLP), while the supply chain is modelled as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) optimization problem using the Resource-Task-Network (RTN) methodology. The obtained model applicability is validated through the solution of a set of supply chain problems.