Designing a food supply chain for enhanced social sustainability in developing countries

Abstract

The food grain production in India has progressively risen in the past few decades, whereas the storage capacity has remained limited. The policymakers in India are attempting to close this capacity gap while addressing sustainability objectives. However, the quantification and integration of multiple social sustainability factors have remained a challenge. To improve the overall sustainability, the study attempts to develop a mathematical model considering procurement, transportation, inventory, and location-related issues. Several supply chain network factors are integrated and assessed while focussing on the social sustainability dimension. Three cases of India's largest food grain-producing and consuming states are analysed with the help of two Pareto-based algorithms. Multiple relationships between variations in supply, demand, and the capacity of silos with three defined objectives are evaluated. It is observed that, the demand significantly influences the economic and environmental objectives compared with the supply and silo capacity. The capacity of silos has a more significant impact on social objectives than economic and environmental objectives. Results reveal the importance of establishing a sufficient number of modernised silos, which reduces environmental impact and improves social factors such as farmers’ economic condition and welfare, balanced economic development, number of jobs created, and public health level.

KEYWORDS:

• Food supply chains
• social sustainability
• multi-objective modelling
• optimisation
• developing countries

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) under the Indo-Swiss Joint Research Programme in the Social Sciences.

Notes on contributors

D. G. Mogale

Dr D. G. Mogale is a Lecturer in Logistics and Operations Management at Cardiff Business School, UK. He completed his PhD from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. Before joining Cardiff Business School, he was affiliated with Cranfield School of Management, UK as a Visiting Researcher. His research interests include supply chain network modelling and optimisation, supply chain risk and resilience, sustainability and food supply chains. In past, he has worked on a few projects funded by European Union, Swiss Government and the Indian Government as a Research Assistant. He has published several papers in leading operations, logistics and supply chain management journals.

Abhijeet Ghadge

Dr Abhijeet Ghadge is an Associate Professor/Reader of Supply Chain Management at Cranfield School of Management, UK. He holds PhD in Operations and Supply Chain Management from Loughborough University, UK, and MTech in Industrial Engineering and Management from Indian Institute of Technology, India. He has over 14 years of industrial, academic and consulting experience working with a wide range of UK, European and Asian organisations. Dr Ghadge has published over 70 research papers, including 45 journal articles in leading operations, logistics and supply chain management journals. He follows practice-driven approach to problems across the broad domains of supply chain risk, sustainability and Industry 4.0.

Naoufel Cheikhrouhou

Naoufel Cheikhrouhou is Professor of Supply chain, Logistics and Operations Management at Geneva School of Business Administration – University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland. He graduated from the School of Engineers of Tunis in 1995 and received his PhD in Industrial Engineering from Grenoble Institute of Technology in 2001. His main research interests are modelling, simulation and optimisation of enterprise networks, behavioural operations management and Demand planning and forecasting. Dr. Cheikhrouhou received the Burbidge Award in 2003 and the BG Ingénieurs conseils Award in 2013 for his contribution to the research excellence in the fields. Leading different projects with the collaboration of national and international industrial companies, Naoufel Cheikhrouhou published more than 100 papers in scientific journals and conferences and regularly acts as keynote speaker in academic and industrial international conferences.

Manoj Kumar Tiwari

Prof. Manoj Kumar Tiwari (FNAE, FNASc, FIISE) is Director, National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai, India. He is also a Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. He received BE in Mechanical Engineering from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, India, in 1986, M Tech in Production Engineering from Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Prayagraj, India, in 1990, and Ph.D. in the Department of Production Engineering from University of Jadavpur. He is actively involved in research relevant to the applications of optimisation, modelling, decision support systems, and data mining in the domain of logistics, supply chain management, and manufacturing systems.