Modeling a low-carbon garment supply chain

Abstract

This article attempts to introduce indirect carbon emission and trade-credit concept in a network optimisation model for sustainable supply chain. The proposed model optimises total cost, total direct carbon emission, total indirect emission in the form of embodied carbon footprint of the raw material and total trade-credit amount over the purchased item in a supply chain. The model calculates the total cost by considering purchasing cost, logistics cost, handling cost and manufacturing cost. It attempts to measure the direct emission involved in manufacturing and logistics operations. The model has the capability to consider dissimilar trucks used for transportation according to their operating cost and carbon emission. Multi-objective goal programming is applied to deal with four objectives to find a tradeoff among these objectives. The result suggests that managers should capture the direct as well as the indirect emission which helps in arriving at appropriate strategy for a sustainable supply chain. The effectiveness of the proposed model is demonstrated through a case of a garment supply chain. This model also supports in deciding appropriate goal for carbon emission, supply chain costs, etc.

Keywords:

• low-carbon supply chain
• carbon emission
• goal programming
• supply chain network design

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their valuable comments, which have helped to improve the quality of this article. The authors also thank the CIBER Center of University of Connecticut, USA, for supporting this research.