A distributed approximation approach for solving the sustainable supply chain network design problem

This paper introduces a comprehensive Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model for a sustainable supply chain network design problem, and an efficient Distributed Approximation Approach (DAA) to solve it approximately. We study a multi-echelon, multi-product and multi-modal supply chain with different transportation modes. Besides relevant costs in the supply chain such as procurement, production and distribution cost, we also explicitly consider the environmental footprint, represented by carbon emissions and water consumption from production and transportation. The approximation approach is a decomposition-based method. First, the original problem is divided into a partner selection sub-problem and a transportation planning sub-problem. Then multiple filter mechanisms are used to remove potentially infeasible solutions, and an approximate value of the objective function is calculated for each of the remaining solutions to perform a further selection. The one with the lowest approximation is chosen ...