Abstract
Presently, an increasing human population, customer consumption, and global market competition result in the reduction of natural resources and growing environmental damage. Therefore, the current practice in the use of resources is not sustainable. The production companies have to focus not only on cost-effective and profitable operation, but at the same time environmentally friendly and sustainable production in order to increase competitiveness. New innovative technologies are required, improving the efficiency of the processes and the optimization of global supply chains (GSC) in order to establish sustainability in environmental, social, and economic aspects. The aim of the study is the GSCs’ optimization, which means forming the optimal combination of the chain members (suppliers, final assemblers, service providers) to achieve cost-effective, time-effective, and sustainable operation. This study introduces an elaborated single- and multi-objective optimization method, including the objective functions (cost, lead time) and design constraints (production and service capacities; volume of inventories; flexibility and sustainability of the chain members). Based on the elaborated method, software has been developed for the optimization of sustainable GSCs. The significance and novelty of the developed method and software is that the chain members have been required to fulfill the sustainability design constraint built into the software. A real case study is introduced, for the optimal design of a sustainable GSC, to confirm that our developed optimization method and software can be applied effectively in practice for the optimization of both profitable and sustainable GSCs.
Highlights
The changing global market environment, increasing human population, rapidly changing customer demands, and growing environmental damage have resulted in significant changes in the production sector
In our study we focused on the main part of the global supply chains (GSC), from the raw material suppliers to the final assemblers, taking the activities of the service providers into consideration
Three optimal sustainable GSCs have been searched for three cases, as follows: (1.) Total cost minimization of the GSC; (2.) total lead time minimization of the GSC; and (3.) a different ratio of the objective functions
Summary
The changing global market environment, increasing human population, rapidly changing customer demands, and growing environmental damage have resulted in significant changes in the production sector. Production philosophies have changed from the traditional mass production to the Industry 4.0 concept. The supply chains have been globalized, cooperation between chain members has become more dynamic, and more complex networks of GSCs have been formed. The supply chain is a system of supply chain members, which are production companies (suppliers, final assembler), service providers and customers as well as their production and service activities. The supply chain is the process of manufacturing finished products from natural resources, raw materials, and components and the delivery of the finished products to the end customers [1]. Continuous material and information flows and value-adding activities among the supply chain members maximize profitability and satisfy customers [2,3].
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