Carbon-efficient closed-loop supply chain network: an integrated modeling approach under uncertainty

Hamed Soleimani; Mahsa Mohammadi; Masih Fadaki; Seyed Mohammad Javad Mirzapour Al-E-Hashem

doi:10.1007/s11356-021-15100-0

Carbon-efficient closed-loop supply chain network: an integrated modeling approach under uncertainty

Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2021 Sep 4. doi: 10.1007/s11356-021-15100-0. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Hamed Soleimani^{1

2}, Mahsa Mohammadi³, Masih Fadaki⁴, Seyed Mohammad Javad Mirzapour Al-E-Hashem⁵

Affiliations

¹ School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia. hamed.soleimani@unimelb.edu.au.
² Faculty of Industrial and Mechanical Engineering, Qazvin Branch, Islamic Azad University, Qazvin, Iran. hamed.soleimani@unimelb.edu.au.
³ Faculty of Industrial and Mechanical Engineering, Qazvin Branch, Islamic Azad University, Qazvin, Iran.
⁴ Department of Supply Chain and Logistics Management, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.
⁵ Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems, Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Tehran, Iran.

PMID: 34480699
DOI: 10.1007/s11356-021-15100-0

Abstract

Inspired by a circular economy paradigm, an evolving momentum of policies and legislations aims to close the loop of product lifecycles through improved level of recycling, remanufacturing, and reuse, with the objective of adding value to the economy while not endangering the environment. However, the trade-off between the environmental and economic sustainability of designing business processes is inevitable. To address this trade-off in the supply chain context, competing objectives regarding both cost minimization and reduction in carbon emission should be simultaneously considered and integrated into a comprehensive model. This complexity is however elevated when uncertainty of demand is taken into consideration. In this study, the design of a closed-loop supply chain is investigated where competing objectives of cost and sustainability of supply chain operations are evaluated under demand uncertainty. Augmented Weighted Tchebycheff (AWT) and ε-constraint methods are employed to address the multi-objectivity of the problem while a robust optimization approach is applied to deal with the demand uncertainty. The results confirm that the proposed approach provides efficient solutions for designing a green closed-loop supply chain network.

Keywords: Augmented Weighted Tchebycheff approach; Closed-loop supply chain; Green supply chain; Multi-objective optimization; Robust optimization; ε-Constraint method.