Integrated Production and Transportation Scheduling for Multi-objective Green Supply Chain Network Design

A green supply chain has been attracting attention as a new approach to minimize a product or service ecological footprint. Our previous researches proposed a basic green supply chain network model consisting of two model components, clients and suppliers. The model provided a numerical method to determine suitable prices and delivery times of ordered products through the modification processes of both production schedules by using genetic algorithms and transportation schedules by heuristic rules and the negotiation processes between suppliers and clients by using an auction based method. The objective of this paper is to propose an integrated scheduling method of production and transportation problems in order to further reduce carbon dioxide emissions without decreasing profits of suppliers. The proposed method makes an efficient transportation schedule that ensures a low vacancy rate and a high loading ratio of transportation vehicles by repeating the modification processes of production and transportation schedules alternately. Experiments were carried by using a developed supply chain simulation system. As the results of the experiments, new method was able to decrease carbon dioxide emissions without decreasing profits.