Integrating Lean, Green, and Resilience Criteria in a Sustainable Food Supply Chain Planning Model

Abstract

Given the current food supply chain (SC) situations that generates substantial amount of wastes and emissions (CO2e) starting from input supply point to the marketing; increasing demand for food for growing population, requirements of water, and energy for processing the food, it is not sustainable. In addition, it is exposed to natural calamity and risks from supply, production and quality system failures and other disruptions and disasters. As such a sustainable food SC network design model is proposed that integrates resilience criteria, lean, and green based practices to overcome limitations of the current practices of the chain and improve its performances. The research designs and plans sustainable food collection regional grids, their potential locations, capacities, operations, establishment of relationship with food processing centers, and big-name retailers. The model is defined as a deterministic model to improve sustainability performance of a grid based supply chain network. Each grid is run by food collection cooperatives formed by the local farmers or small business organization. The research contributes by designing and planning potential grid locations, their capacities and integrates resilience criteria and lean based practices for improving sustainability performances. Applicability of the model is illustrated by the grid network of an example region (state).