An Integrated Problem of Production Scheduling and Transportation in a Two-Stage Supply Chain with Carbon Emission Consideration

This study considers a scheduling model for a supply chain system that can choose a set of subcontractors from the available subcontractors (non-identical manufacturing facilities) to fulfill a part of its orders/jobs in order to maximize the supply chain profitability. Further, this study aims to reduce carbon emissions from transportation activities in the supply chain. The orders/jobs to be processed have different processing times on different manufacturing facilities and due dates. All the completed jobs at the outsourced centers (sub-contractors) need to be transported back to the central manufacturing facility. The present study integrates three issues: (1) selection of subcontractors; (2) scheduling of jobs, and (3) logistic scheduling with carbon emission consideration; all these decisions in a supply chain have not been considered together in the existing literature. We present this problem with the objective of minimizing the total costs associated with production and logistic decisions, and propose a mixed-integer linear programming model.