A Hybrid Optimization Method for Sustainable and Flexible Design of Supply–Production–Distribution Network in the Physical Internet

Abstract

The resilience and sustainability of supply chains are facing new challenges due to the increasing complexity of supply chains. Compared to traditional supply chain networks, the Physical Internet (PI) has the potential to address sustainable development challenges and build resilient supply chain networks by providing interconnected and open logistics services. However, the interplay between resilience and sustainability has yet to be thoroughly explored in the PI-enabled supply chain literature. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between resilience and sustainability in PI-enabled supply chains. An innovative hybrid approach that combines the resilient-sustainable performance scoring method with mixed-possibilistic programming is proposed to trade-off and analyze the relationship between the two. Applying the concepts of resilience and sustainability to PI-enabled supply chains involves optimizing costs, sustainable performance, and resilience levels simultaneously. This enables coping with unforeseen disruptions from suppliers, plants, and PI hubs. The results of computational experiments have demonstrated that the PI-enabled supply chain exhibits stronger sustainable and resilience performance in dealing with random disruptions compared to traditional supply chains. The fruitful research yielded important management insights and practical implications, thereby contributing to the reinforcement of the literature on PI.