The article focuses on different sustainability issues in supply chain design by proposing an application example in a local business retail devoted to support the pharmaceutics sector in the province of Cosenza (Italy). The objective of the work is to show how different sustainability aspects need to be considered during the supply chain design process. Specifically, three different sustainability aspects are considered – technical sustainability, economic sustainability and environmental sustainability – in two different supply chain design problems: additional of new potential pharmacies to the supply chain and optimization of the supply chain routes. To this end, a simulation model of the pharmaceutical supply chain is developed; the simulation model is jointly used with advanced statistic techniques – Design of Experiments (DOE) and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) – to reduce the impact on the service level caused by the addition of the new pharmacies, and with optimization techniques – Ants Colony Optimization (ACO) – to minimize the total amount of kilometres covered for each route. The simulation results show the importance to use an integrated approach to the supply chain design problem as the only solution to achieve sustainability.
SUSTAINABLE SUPPLY CHAIN DESIGN: AN APPLICATION EXAMPLE IN A LOCAL BUSINESS RETAIL
LONGO, Francesco
2012-01-01
Abstract
The article focuses on different sustainability issues in supply chain design by proposing an application example in a local business retail devoted to support the pharmaceutics sector in the province of Cosenza (Italy). The objective of the work is to show how different sustainability aspects need to be considered during the supply chain design process. Specifically, three different sustainability aspects are considered – technical sustainability, economic sustainability and environmental sustainability – in two different supply chain design problems: additional of new potential pharmacies to the supply chain and optimization of the supply chain routes. To this end, a simulation model of the pharmaceutical supply chain is developed; the simulation model is jointly used with advanced statistic techniques – Design of Experiments (DOE) and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) – to reduce the impact on the service level caused by the addition of the new pharmacies, and with optimization techniques – Ants Colony Optimization (ACO) – to minimize the total amount of kilometres covered for each route. The simulation results show the importance to use an integrated approach to the supply chain design problem as the only solution to achieve sustainability.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.