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Optimization in Logistics for Sustainable Supply Chain Management

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Engineering and Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (6 July 2024) | Viewed by 29469

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Poznan School of Logistics, Estkowskiego 6, 61-755 Poznań, Poland
Interests: logistics; digital economy; e-commerce; business network; ICT
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

It is our pleasure to announce a new Special Issue “Optimization in Logistics for Sustainable Supply Chain Management” in the journal Sustainability.

The current operation practices of logistics systems are becoming more and more complicated due to the changing demand of customers and the impact of global pandemic. As the world supply chain has been strongly affected by the pandemic since 2020, there is an urgent need to optimize logistics processes.

Modelling advanced optimizations in logistics and supply chain practices is crucial in both the industrial world and the academic world. Utilizing Industry 4.0 technologies, we can achieve the goal of optimization in a sustainable and low-carbon way. All participants in logistics systems, including manufacturers, their supply chain partners, and customers, should strive to accomplish sustainable supply chain management.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome, especially high-quality research focused on sustainable logistics and supply chain systems. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Optimization modeling and its applications in logistics system and supply chain management;
  • Decision support systems in supply chain management;
  • Industry 4.0 technologies in supply chain management;
  • Empirical research of sustainable logistics and supply chain management.

Prof. Dr. Arkadiusz Kawa
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • supply chain management
  • logistics system
  • sustainable supply chain
  • Industry 4.0 technologies (big data, AI and blockchain, etc.)
  • sustainable value chain

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

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18 pages, 843 KiB  
Article
Bi-Objective Inventory Policy with Comprehensive Environmental Factors Formulation and Service Level Constraints
by Marco Giacomelli, Francesco Pilati and Matteo Brunelli
Sustainability 2024, 16(17), 7871; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177871 - 9 Sep 2024
Viewed by 1368
Abstract
As firms and consumers engage with environmental issues, decisions for inventory control need to entail this perspective of sustainability. Most green inventory models employ methods such as carbon caps or taxes for dealing with environmental sustainability. This problem can be more generally tackled [...] Read more.
As firms and consumers engage with environmental issues, decisions for inventory control need to entail this perspective of sustainability. Most green inventory models employ methods such as carbon caps or taxes for dealing with environmental sustainability. This problem can be more generally tackled via an explicit estimation of the environmental drivers of maintaining inventory in a warehouse, paired with the economic perspective within a transparent multi-objective optimization framework. With this goal, this paper builds on a detailed estimation of environmental and cost factors for a continuous-review inventory policy. The bi-objective problem is tackled by keeping the objective functions separate. In particular, the modeling of greenhouse gas emission or cost performance factors for the inventory encompasses factors that can depend on the decision variables, taking into account aspects such as warehouse location, building characterization, energy usage, and transport requirements. The effects of the emission drivers on the multi-objective optimization decisions are analyzed, considering that the problem can be constrained by multiple service level measures. Stockout response can be multifaceted and different service level measures capture different aspects of inventory shortages, affecting the resulting efficient solutions differently. The results highlight the impact of aspects such as warehouse location and supply capacity on solutions for the multi-objective inventory problem. Managerial decisions are thus influenced by warehousing and supply attributes via a traceable link to specific cost and emission determinants. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optimization in Logistics for Sustainable Supply Chain Management)
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15 pages, 2274 KiB  
Article
Determination of Logistics Performance of G20 Countries Using Quantitative Decision-Making Techniques
by Pınar Pehlivan, Anıl Ilkem Aslan, Sofia David and Silviu Bacalum
Sustainability 2024, 16(5), 1852; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16051852 - 23 Feb 2024
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3281
Abstract
Today, the increase in competition with globalization has caused logistics to gain importance, with international trade as one of its basic elements. Developments in the transportation and logistics sector affect economic growth through their effects on production, consumption, and trade. Similarly, international trade [...] Read more.
Today, the increase in competition with globalization has caused logistics to gain importance, with international trade as one of its basic elements. Developments in the transportation and logistics sector affect economic growth through their effects on production, consumption, and trade. Similarly, international trade and economic growth also support the development of the transportation and logistics sector. From this perspective, logistics is an indicator of development. Nowadays, logistics is a constantly developing and growing sector. The aim of this study is to conduct performance rankings and cluster analyses of G20 countries in 2023 and to compare the results with the logistics performance index (LPI) scores published by the World Bank. Our assumption is that the results of the analysis and the LPI index would be the same or similar. The findings obtained as a result of both analyses are largely similar to the LPI ranking presented by the World Bank. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optimization in Logistics for Sustainable Supply Chain Management)
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19 pages, 1729 KiB  
Article
Coordinated Supply Contracts for a Two-Echelon Supply Chain under Given Bargaining Powers
by Sung-Moon Jung, Shie-Gheun Koh, Young-Jin Kim and Pyung-Hoi Koo
Sustainability 2023, 15(17), 13005; https://doi.org/10.3390/su151713005 - 29 Aug 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1572
Abstract
This paper addresses the supply contracts within a decentralized supply chain comprising an upstream component supplier and a downstream manufacturer. With the need to invest in production capacity before the sales season, suppliers often make conservative capacity decisions due to uncertain demand, which [...] Read more.
This paper addresses the supply contracts within a decentralized supply chain comprising an upstream component supplier and a downstream manufacturer. With the need to invest in production capacity before the sales season, suppliers often make conservative capacity decisions due to uncertain demand, which gives rise to the double marginalization problem. The distribution of supply chain profits is typically determined based on each member’s relative bargaining power, often exogenously provided in the market. While numerous studies have been conducted to design supply contracts for coordination in decentralized supply chains, most of them overlook the supplier’s capacity constraints and the existing bargaining power structure. To bridge this gap, this study proposes a supply contract scheme that achieves coordination under any given bargaining power structure. The key finding of this paper is that two contract types, namely capacity cost-sharing (CCS) and surplus capacity compensation (SCC), can address the entire spectrum of bargaining powers. This study demonstrates how to identify a specific threshold for a given bargaining power structure, from which the appropriate contract type is selected. Through numerical illustrations, we present how to select coordinated contracts for different bargaining power structures and examine the influence of contract parameters on the profit of each supply chain member. The primary contribution is that this study provides actionable insights for practitioners to effectively implement coordinated contracts by presenting a straightforward and practical methodology. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optimization in Logistics for Sustainable Supply Chain Management)
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23 pages, 6638 KiB  
Article
A Study of Electronic Product Supply Chain Decisions Considering Quality Control and Cross-Channel Returns
by Haiping Ren, Rui Chen and Zhijun Lin
Sustainability 2023, 15(16), 12304; https://doi.org/10.3390/su151612304 - 11 Aug 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2281
Abstract
This article focuses on the return problem of electronic products caused by the low level of quality control in the production process. Based on previous research, a centralized decision model (DM) and four kinds of decentralized DMs are constructed according to the differences [...] Read more.
This article focuses on the return problem of electronic products caused by the low level of quality control in the production process. Based on previous research, a centralized decision model (DM) and four kinds of decentralized DMs are constructed according to the differences in the supply chain decision order and the return loss bearers. Moreover, the impact of quality control on the return rate and market demand is also considered in the model research to achieve the optimization of the model. Using Stackelberg game knowledge to compare and analyze supply chain decisions, profits and influencing factors in different models, the final conclusions are drawn: (1) the decision is optimal and the profit is the highest in the centralized DM; (2) when the manufacturer dominates the supply chain decision, the difference in return loss bearers does not affect the supply chain decision and profit; (3) compared with other decentralized DMs, when the retailer dominates the supply chain decision and the manufacturer bears the return loss, the supply chain decision is better and the profit is higher; (4) the quality control level and the total profit in the five supply chain models are proportional to the quality control effect and the consumer perception of quality control. In addition, this paper introduces a joint contract to coordinate the supply chain under the decentralized DM and achieves the desired results. Finally, the relevant research findings and the validity of the contract are verified in the arithmetic analysis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optimization in Logistics for Sustainable Supply Chain Management)
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57 pages, 6216 KiB  
Article
How to Measure Sustainability in the Supply Chain Design: An Integrated Proposal from an Extensive and Systematic Literature Review
by Andrea Teresa Espinoza Pérez and Óscar C. Vásquez
Sustainability 2023, 15(9), 7138; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15097138 - 24 Apr 2023
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 7090
Abstract
The increase in the world population and resource scarcity has led to the introduction of environmental concepts such as sustainability and sustainable supply chain design (SSCD). However, there is a lack of consensus among researchers on how to measure sustainability in SSCD. Therefore, [...] Read more.
The increase in the world population and resource scarcity has led to the introduction of environmental concepts such as sustainability and sustainable supply chain design (SSCD). However, there is a lack of consensus among researchers on how to measure sustainability in SSCD. Therefore, the authors propose a novel approach to measuring sustainability in the context of SSCD by developing an integrated, tractable, and representative metrics framework. The methodology corresponds to a quantitative approach involving bibliographic examination and statistical techniques. First, the authors conducted a systematic literature review by formulating research questions and a search protocol, searched for relevant articles, and conducted a quality assessment on full-text reviews to obtain metrics for measuring sustainability in SSCD from the literature. Then, they defined aggregation criteria representing their inclusion relationship by merging associated metrics. The authors then used Cluster Analysis (CA), a multivariate statistical technique, for grouping the metrics. Consequently, twelve clusters were distinguished from 541 research articles, grouping 51 metrics from different sustainability dimensions. It shows the strong connection among the sustainability dimensions, i.e., they must be assessed holistically. Then, we proposed reducing the 51 metrics to 5 to evaluate sustainability in the SSCD, allowing us to focus on a reduced number of indicators. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optimization in Logistics for Sustainable Supply Chain Management)
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Review

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19 pages, 1425 KiB  
Review
Economic Order Quantity: A State-of-the-Art in the Era of Uncertain Supply Chains
by Mohammed Alnahhal, Batin Latif Aylak, Muataz Al Hazza and Ahmad Sakhrieh
Sustainability 2024, 16(14), 5965; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16145965 - 12 Jul 2024
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 12484
Abstract
Inventory management is crucial for companies to minimize unnecessary costs associated with overstocking or understocking items. Utilizing the economic order quantity (EOQ) to minimize total costs is a key decision in inventory management, particularly in achieving a sustainable supply chain. The classical EOQ [...] Read more.
Inventory management is crucial for companies to minimize unnecessary costs associated with overstocking or understocking items. Utilizing the economic order quantity (EOQ) to minimize total costs is a key decision in inventory management, particularly in achieving a sustainable supply chain. The classical EOQ formula is rarely applicable in practice. For example, suppliers may enforce a minimum order quantity (MOQ) that is much larger than the EOQ. Some conditions such as imperfect quality and growing items represent variants of EOQ. Moreover, some requirements, such as the reduction of CO2 emissions, can alter the formula. Moreover, disruptions in the supply chain, such as COVID-19, can affect the formula. This study investigates which requirements must be considered during the calculation of the EOQ. Based on a literature review, 18 requirements that could alter the EOQ formula were identified. The level of coverage for these requirements has been tracked in the literature. Research gaps were presented to be investigated in future research. The analysis revealed that, despite their importance, at least 11 requirements have seldom been explored in the literature. Among these, topics such as EOQ in Industry 4.0, practical EOQ, and resilient EOQ have been identified as promising areas for future research. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optimization in Logistics for Sustainable Supply Chain Management)
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