A Bi-Objective Sustainable Supply Chain Redesign: What Effect Does Energy Availability Have on Redesign?

Abstract

During supply chain redesign processes, many environmental initiatives at facilities and their surrounding regions are affected by the closing, opening, or even broadening of facilities. These initiatives may be about the surplus renewable energies that the facility generates for its region, the renewable energy sources that are available in the area for the facility, or the ecological relationships between facilities and their surrounding regions in general. The implications of these ecological relationships for the supply chain redesign problem were considered in this study in order to minimize the negative outcomes while minimizing the process’s related expenses. Thus, to minimize the unwanted effects, an objective function is defined in addition to the cost objective, which results in a bi-objective problem. Although small cases can be solved by exact methods such as AUGMECON, for larger scales, a matheuristic algorithm needs to be developed. The efficiency of the developed algorithm was investigated through numerical instances as well as with different metrics including a Pareto analysis. The results at larger scales show a shorter runtime of the matheuristic compared to the AUGMECON algorithm. Additionally, the matheuristic method provides a wider range of decision areas for managers.