Regional low-carbon timber logistics network design and management using multi-objective optimization

ABSTRACT

With the concern about environmental issues, supply chain designers and managers need to make trade-offs between the environmental impacts and costs of a logistics network. We develop a multi-objective optimization model that minimizes the total cost and CO₂ emissions of a regional timber logistics network and seeks for the simultaneous optimization of logistics network design and operation. The generic model is applied to a case study in Jiangle County in China. The Pareto solution set, derived by applying the normalized normal constraint method, shows the relationship between carbon emissions and total cost. Our results reveal that both network structure and the allocations of timber flows have effects on the Pareto solutions, suggesting the importance of considering network design and management together in logistics network analysis. The model results also indicate that though the current carbon price is hard to trigger the change of the timber logistics network structure in Jiangle County, it can still be a driving force to push the decision-makers to implement lower carbon logistics plans. Additionally, sensitivity analysis shows that improving road conditions can remarkably reduce CO₂ emissions in the logistics network and that maintaining an appropriate ratio of timber supply to demand can lead to some compromise between carbon emissions and total cost. These findings offer new insights into the trade-offs between the carbon emissions and total cost of the regional timber logistics network, which are of value to logistics network designers and managers as well as policy-makers in the study region and beyond.

KEYWORDS:

• Timber supply chain
• logistics network design
• supply chain management
• multi-objective optimization
• CO₂ emissions

Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province under grant numbers 2014H0010 and 2017J01788 and by the University Development Foundation of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University (number 61201405106). The authors appreciate and sincerely thank the anonymous peer reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was financially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province under grant numbers 2014H0010 and 2017J01788 and by the University Development Foundation of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University [number 61201405106].