Designing a sustainable supply chain network

Abstract

This paper deals with the design of a sustainable supply chain in a high variety production environment. To respond to this challenge, a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming model is proposed. The economic criteria are the costs of transportation, and that of opening and operating manufacturing facilities; the environmental criterion is the level of CO2 emissions due to transportation and storage; and the social criterion is the number of created jobs and supplier assessment. A numerical experiment is derived from industrial data of the textile sector. The results show the existing trade-offs between sustainability goals in the supply chain design context. Moreover, the differences between network structures when the decision is guided by just one of the dimensions of sustainability are compared. Finally, future research opportunities are identified to include the dynamic evaluation in the sustainable supply chain network design context. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.