Green supply chain design with multi-objective optimization

Abstract

Consideration of environmental and economic aspects in supply chain design is required to reduce negative impacts on the environment caused by the increasing levels of industrialization. In this paper, a new green supply chain design approach has been proposed to deal with the trade-offs between environmental and financial issues. The new approach incorporates a closed loop network to accommodate the reprocessing paradigm of disposal products and a multi-objective optimization mathematical model to minimize overall costs and carbon dioxide emissions when setting the supply chain network in which previous models in this type of network have not include environmental impact. A mathematical model is developed by assuming deterministic and satisfied demand. Optimization process of the mathematical model is performed using three scalarization approaches, namely weighted sum method, weighted Tchebycheff and augmented weighted Tchebycheff. Differences in the optimization results are analyzed to identify the advantages and drawbacks of each approach when solving a case study. A detailed discussion of the most appropriate method related to computational outcome is provided hereafter.