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Sustainable Logistics and Supply Chain Management in the Aspect of Globalization

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2022) | Viewed by 39978

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Yuvraj Gajpal

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Guest Editor

Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB R3T5V4, Canada
Interests: supply chain management; operations research; mathematical modeling; transportation and logistics; metaheuristic
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. S.S. Appadoo

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Guest Editor

Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada, R3T5V4
Interests: supply chain management; possibility theory; application of fuzzy systems; mathematical programming

Prof. Dr. Rajbir Bhatti

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Guest Editor

Bissett School of Business, Mont Royal University, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, T3E6K6
Interests: global supply chain; logistics; warehouse and distribution

Prof. Dr. Jin Li

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Guest Editor

School of Management and E-Business, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, 310018, China
Interests: supply chain management; green transportation and logistics; system modeling and simulation

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Recently, there has been growing interest in the application of sustainability issues in supply chain management, logistics, transportation and various optimization models (Seuring and Müller 2008). Supply chain management constantly faces many challenges and one of them is to operate in a sustainable manner. In this Special Issue, our aim is to explore the application of sustainability in supply chain management, operation management, logistics, transportation, healthcare management and fuzzy sets theory. We invite researchers from various fields of management to consider original and high-quality research papers that report mainly on sustainability-management-related issues that would contribute to fulfilling the aim of this Special Issue. Manuscripts in this Special Issue will focus on both theoretical and empirical studies. Papers may include literature reviews, conceptual theory development, qualitative survey research, such as case studies, and quantitative empirical methods (Seuring 2013; Roy et al. 2018; Roy 2019). Submitted papers will have to comply with the guidelines of the journal. Other topics may cover issues related to COVID-19 within a healthcare environment. We may also include papers exploring methods of analyzing primary or secondary data in light of disruption in the healthcare industry within a sustainable environment (Dobrzykowski 2019). This research will enable us as academics and researchers to generate a meaningful sustainability framework for future research. Another important objective of this type of research on sustainability is that it encompasses green supply chains and closed-loop supply chains (Neto et al. 2010).

Topics include but are not limited to:

Transportation and logistical problems in sustainable development;
Application of DEA and efficiency measures in sustainability management;
Sustainability in supply chain management and operation management;
Sustainable logistics and vehicle routing problems in supply chain management;
Heuristics optimization methods in sustainable supply chain networks;
Lean and agile management in sustainability management;
Ethics and sustainability in supply chain management;
Big data and predictive analytics with social and environmental consideration;
Supply chain optimization models using sustainable practices;
Environmentally sustainable supply chain management and practices;
Supplier selection models in a sustainable environment;
Sustainable practices in healthcare management;
Application of MCDM methods in sustainable engineering;
Risk management for sustainable supply chains;
Sustainable humanitarian supply chain management and practices;
Environmental sustainability in supply chain management;
Fuzzy sets theory and applications in sustainable supply chain management;
Fuzzy, grey, rough, and neutrosophic theories with consideration to sustainability issues.

Original papers related to the above topics that provide the latest scholarly information and case studies on sustainable supply chain management and its applications are welcome.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

References:

Dobrzykowski, D., 2019. Understanding the downstream healthcare supply chain: unpacking regulatory and industry characteristics. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 55 (2), 26–46.

Neto, J.Q.F., Walther, G., Bloemhof, J., Nunen, J.A.E.E. van, and Spengler, T., 2010. From closed-loop to sustainable supply chains: the WEEE case. International Journal of Production Research, 48 (15), 4463–4481.

Roy, V., 2019. Decoding the elemental arcs of superior performance in sustainable supply chains. Management Decision, 57 (9), 2570–2592.

Roy, V., Schoenherr, T., and Charan, P., 2018. The thematic landscape of literature in sustainable supply chain management (SSCM). International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 38 (4), 1091–1124.

Seuring, S., 2013. A review of modeling approaches for sustainable supply chain management. Decision Support Systems, 54 (4), 1513–1520.

Seuring, S. and Müller, M., 2008. From a literature review to a conceptual framework for sustainable supply chain management. Journal of Cleaner Production, 16 (15), 1699–1710.

Prof. Yuvraj Gajpal
Prof. S.S. Appadoo
Prof. Rajbir Bhatti
Prof. Jin Li
Guest Editors

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

sustainable supply chain management
sustainable transportation and logistics
sustainable management
carbon emission
global warming
greenhouse gas emission

Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 345 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Optimization of Conventional and Green Vehicles Composition under Carbon Emission Cap

by Md. Anisul Islam and Yuvraj Gajpal

Sustainability 2021, 13(12), 6940; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su13126940 - 20 Jun 2021

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 2021

Abstract

The CO₂ emission of transportation is significantly reduced by the employment of green vehicles to the existing vehicle fleet of the organizations. This paper intends to optimize the composition of conventional and green vehicles for a logistics distribution problem operating under a carbon emission cap imposed by the government. The underlying problem involves product delivery by the vehicles starting from a single depot to geographically distributed customers. The delivery occurs within specified time windows. To solve the proposed problem, we design a hybrid metaheuristic solution based on ant colony optimization (ACO) and variable neighborhood search (VNS) algorithms. Extensive computational experiments have been performed on newly generated problem instances and benchmark problem instances adopted from the literature. The proposed hybrid ACO is proven to be superior to the state-of-the-art algorithms available in the literature. We obtain 21 new best-known solutions out of 56 benchmark instances of vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW). The proposed mixed fleet model obtains the best composition of conventional and green vehicles with a 6.90% reduced amount of CO₂ emissions compared to the case when the fleet consists of conventional vehicles only. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Logistics and Supply Chain Management in the Aspect of Globalization)

20 pages, 2667 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Impact of Green Credit Financing and Carbon Emission Limits on the Supply Chain Based on POF

by Liurui Deng, Lan Yang and Wei Li

Sustainability 2021, 13(11), 5814; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su13115814 - 21 May 2021

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2465

Abstract

In recent years, environmental protection has been paid more and more attention. Green credit policy (GCP) is one of the significant preferential policies for government to encourage enterprises to vigorously develop green projects. We are interested in the impact of the central bank’s GCP on the profits and optimal strategies of manufacturers and suppliers related to POF (purchase order financing). Specifically, we build a game-theoretical model consisting of a manufacturer, a bank and a green supplier and a non-green supplier. Furthermore, the optimal strategies of the manufacturer and suppliers when the bank or the government sets a carbon emission cap on suppliers are discussed. We come to some important conclusions about a GCP that promotes the development of green projects since it brings higher profits to both the manufacturer and suppliers than the lack of a GCP. Furthermore, the higher the production cost, the better the effect of a GCP. Under the carbon emission restrictions required by the government, the effect of GCP is weakened and the profits of the manufacturer and the suppliers are reduced to zero due to the gradually increasing delivery risks as production costs increase. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Logistics and Supply Chain Management in the Aspect of Globalization)

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19 pages, 2387 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Evaluation of the Sustainable Coupling Coordination of the Logistics Industry and the Manufacturing Industry in the Yangtze River Economic Belt

by Ying Gong, Xiao-Qiong Yang, Chun-Yan Ran, Victor Shi and Yu-Feng Zhou

Sustainability 2021, 13(9), 5167; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su13095167 - 05 May 2021

Cited by 14 | Viewed by 2151

Abstract

In order to promote the sustainable and coordinated development of the logistics industry and the manufacturing industry in the Yangtze River Economic Belt of China and provide the policy makers with decision-making references, this paper explored the spatio-temporal evolution of the coupling coordination development level of the two industries. A three-stage super-efficiency SBM model, which eliminated the influence of environmental factors and random errors, was constructed to make it possible to conduct an in-depth comparative analysis on the effective decision-making units (DMUs), making the calculation results more accurate. This was the main contribution of this paper. Based on the new model considering undesirable output, this paper analyzed the panel data of 11 provinces and cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt from 2007 to 2017 and investigated the coordination development level from the dimensions of time and space considering the energy input and carbon emissions of the two industries. Our main research findings were as follows. First, due to the relative lagging of the logistics industry in promoting the development of the manufacturing industry, the overall level of the coordination between the two industries was at a stage of limited coordination. Second, the regional differences were significant with a spatial evolution pattern of “high in the east and low in the west”. Third, environmental factors affected the input efficiency of the logistics industry and the manufacturing industry, especially the latter. Overall, this paper made theoretical and practical contributions to promoting the joint development of the two industries, improving the logistics industry and upgrading the manufacturing industry. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Logistics and Supply Chain Management in the Aspect of Globalization)

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14 pages, 780 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Mehar Approach for Finding Shortest Path in Supply Chain Network

by Tanveen Kaur Bhatia, Amit Kumar, Srimantoorao S. Appadoo, Yuvraj Gajpal and Mahesh Kumar Sharma

Sustainability 2021, 13(7), 4016; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su13074016 - 04 Apr 2021

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2159

Abstract

The aim of each company/industry is to provide a final product to customers at the minimum possible cost, as well as to protect the environment from degradation. Ensuring the shortest travel distance between involved locations plays an important role in achieving the company’s/industry’s objective as (i) the cost of a final product can be minimized by minimizing the total distance travelled (ii) finding the shortest distance between involved locations will require less fuel than the longest distance between involved locations. This will eventually result in lesser degradation of the environment. Hence, in the last few years, various algorithms have been proposed to solve different types of shortest path problems. A recently proposed algorithm for solving interval-valued Pythagorean fuzzy shortest path problems requires excessive computational efforts. Hence, to reduce the computational efforts, in this paper, firstly, an alternative lexicographic method is proposed for comparing interval-valued Pythagorean fuzzy numbers. Then, using the proposed lexicographic comparing method, a new approach (named as Mehar approach) is proposed to solve interval-valued Pythagorean fuzzy shortest path problems. Furthermore, the superiority of the proposed lexicographic comparing method, as well as the proposed Mehar approach, is discussed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Logistics and Supply Chain Management in the Aspect of Globalization)

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23 pages, 371 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Spare Parts Inventory Management: A Literature Review

by Shuai Zhang, Kai Huang and Yufei Yuan

Sustainability 2021, 13(5), 2460; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su13052460 - 25 Feb 2021

Cited by 29 | Viewed by 17312

Abstract

Spare parts are held as inventory to support product maintenance in order to reduce downtime and extend the lifetime of products. Recently, spare parts inventory management has been attracting more attention due to the “right-to-repair” movement which requires that manufacturers provide sufficient spare parts throughout the life-cyle of their products to reduce waste so as to achieve sustainability. In this review, 148 papers regarding spare parts inventory management published from 2010 to 2020 are examined. The studies are classified based on two groups of perspectives. The first group includes the characteristics of spare parts, products, inventory systems, and supply chains, while the second group focuses on the characteristics of research methodologies and topics in the reviewed studies. The novelty of this literature review is three-fold. Firstly, we focus on analyzing the supply chain structure of different inventory networks for managing spare parts. Secondly, we classify the current literature based on analytics techniques, i.e., descriptive analytics, predictive analytics, and prescriptive analytics. Finally, the research gaps in this field are discussed from the perspective of reverse logistics, consumer durable goods, inventory network structure and policy, spare parts demand pattern modeling, and big data analytics. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Logistics and Supply Chain Management in the Aspect of Globalization)

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13 pages, 441 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Relationships between Logistics Performance and Aspects of Sustainability: A Cross-Country Analysis

by Paul D. Larson

Sustainability 2021, 13(2), 623; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su13020623 - 11 Jan 2021

Cited by 22 | Viewed by 4680

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate relationships between national logistics performance and dimensions of sustainability. A series of hypotheses are developed and tested using regression analysis of secondary data. The sources of data are the Sustainable Society Index (SSI) and the World Bank’s Logistics Performance Index (LPI). Fundamental aspects of social sustainability and well-being—a healthy, educated population, equality, good governance, and reasonable income distribution—are related to higher levels of logistics performance. In addition, while logistics performance is a driver of economic activity and success, it is also a contributor to environmental degradation in the form of harmful emissions. If economic growth is among a nation’s goals, its leaders are advised to support social well-being, along with technologies and practices for greater energy efficiency (and lower emissions) in transportation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Logistics and Supply Chain Management in the Aspect of Globalization)

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20 pages, 6447 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Electric Vehicle Routing Problem with Battery Swapping Considering Energy Consumption and Carbon Emissions

by Jin Li, Feng Wang and Yu He

Sustainability 2020, 12(24), 10537; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su122410537 - 16 Dec 2020

Cited by 132 | Viewed by 6356

Abstract

In this paper, we study an electric vehicle routing problem while considering the constraints on battery life and battery swapping stations. We first introduce a comprehensive model consisting of speed, load and distance to measure the energy consumption and carbon emissions of electric vehicles. Second, we propose a mixed integer programming model to minimize the total costs related to electric vehicle energy consumption and travel time. To solve this model efficiently, we develop an adaptive genetic algorithm based on hill climbing optimization and neighborhood search. The crossover and mutation probabilities are designed to adaptively adjust with the change of population fitness. The hill climbing search is used to enhance the local search ability of the algorithm. In order to satisfy the constraints of battery life and battery swapping stations, the neighborhood search strategy is applied to obtain the final optimal feasible solution. Finally, we conduct numerical experiments to test the performance of the algorithm. Computational results illustrate that a routing arrangement that accounts for power consumption and travel time can reduce carbon emissions and total logistics delivery costs. Moreover, we demonstrate the effect of adaptive crossover and mutation probabilities on the optimal solution. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Logistics and Supply Chain Management in the Aspect of Globalization)

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