Optimizing the Cost of Distribution of Green Supply Chain Using an Evolutionary Algorithm

Abstract

Global warming due to the continuous use of fossil fuel by industries and the transport sector and the use of the naturally available resource by industries has created a dent in the ecological system. Governments, businesses, and customers are drifting focus toward products that create minimal environmental imbalance and prefer products that use more recycled material or components. Transportation accounts for 70% of fossil fuel consumption and its associated emission. In this direction forward, businesses prefer to green their supply chain network, which would eventually bring down the costs and emission level in the long term. This study developed a green supply chain mixed integer linear program model and goal programming model that handles the following costs: transportation, load penalty, emission, inventory, and shortage. A five-echelon lead acid battery supply chain is considered for the study. The supply chain network has component suppliers in the first echelon followed by two manufacturing plants, a warehouse, eighty-two exclusive retailers spread across geographically, and customers in the consecutive echelon. Exclusive retailers are clustered into four, five, six, seven, and eight clusters using the K means algorithm. Three types of vehicles with varying capacities were employed to transport components and end products between echelons. The selection of vehicle type is based on the weight of the cargo. The model urges to fully utilize any transport trip by levying a penalty for underutilized trips and canceling trips with less than eighty percent of rated capacity. In the forward logistics, new batteries will be transported from the warehouse to exclusive retailers, and in the reverse logistics, the end-of-life batteries collected by the exclusive retailers will be transported to the suppliers dealing with lead components. Two approaches to determine the route were developed. First, the route is computed by the shortest route from the warehouse to the exclusive retailer in each cluster by the...