Session: DFMLC-08-01/DAC-20-01: Modeling and Optimization for Sustainable Design and Manufacturing

Paper Number: 70826

Start Time: August 19, 03:20 PM

70826 - Impact of Asset Management in a Green Supply Chain 

With increasing concern about global warming caused by greenhouse gasses (GHGs), organizations have become more responsible for their operations. According to the U.S. EPA, companies with a supply chain (SC) generate about 42% of GHGs in their transportation (30%) and inventory systems(12%), which makes mitigating climate change through a green supply chain (GSC) management a reasonable solution.

To design a GSC, we model the SC as a network of customers and stores, with customers driving in cars to and from stores and the retailer resupplying the stores from a central warehouse. The number and location of stores are determined to find a low-cost and low emission configuration for the SC.

 The key findings are (1) SC with more small stores caused less emission than the one with fewer large stores; (2) when achieving the lowest operating cost is more important than mitigating GHG emissions, fewer large stores are preferred than the more small stores; (3) SC with two warehouses results in a reduced number of open stores in a large area such as Puerto Rico.

Our contributions are (1) building a model of a GSC based on population data;(2) modeling a GSC in two-echelon solved simultaneously using a k-median approach;(3) evaluating the effect of having multiple warehouses on the overall GHGs emissions; (4) managing the incompleteness and inaccuracy of the data through implementing the compromise Decision Support Problem construct to identifying satisficing solutions.

In this paper, we will describe the aforementioned model and highlight important parameters that can impact the green GHG emissions reduction from a supply chain. We will also discuss how this approach can be employed for other design problems, including manufacturing and healthcare.

Presenting Author: Sara Hajihashemi University of Oklahoma

Authors:

Sara Hajihashemi University of Oklahoma
Reza Alizadeh University of Oklahoma
Janet K. Allen University of Oklahoma
Farrokh Mistree University of Oklahoma