Value chain design through synergistic optimisation of configuration and operation of value activities: an application case of cold chain logistics

Abstract

The ‘no breakage chain’ characteristics of cold chain logistics make it important to study the synergistic optimisation between its activities. This study analyses the value chain of cold/frozen goods logistics businesses and proposes a value chain-based synergistic framework: intra-enterprise synergy, and synergy of internal and external enterprises. Based on this framework, a cost optimisation model for intra-enterprise synergy of value activities is established; then with consideration of the market-oriented value activity configuration, a synergistic optimisation model for internal and external enterprise between customer utility and enterprise cost through value activity configuration and operations is established. The synergistic optimisation model is a 0–1 nonlinear bilevel programming (BLP) problem, which is solved by using a bilevel nested genetic algorithm (BNGA). Finally, the established synergistic optimisation model is applied to case analysis of a cold chain logistics company as a computational example to demonstrate the effectiveness of the model.

KEYWORDS:

• Cold chain logistics
• value chain
• value activities
• configuration
• bilevel programming
• bilevel nested genetic algorithm

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in figshare at http://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19593355.v1

Additional information

Funding

This research was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Project Number 71371132.