Design and planning of sustainable supply chains: The case study of a tissue paper business

Abstract

While planning to expand its tissue paper business, a Portuguese company aims to explore options regarding the design and planning of its supply chain accounting not only for economic objectives but also environmental and social concerns (the three pillars of sustainability). A multi-objective mixed integer linear programming model (MOMILP) is developed and applied to the company supply chain focusing on the supply of tissue paper to the United Kingdom market. Decisions to be taken include the network structure, entity location and capacity definition, transportation network definition, production and storage levels, and material flow planning. Additionally, it is important to decide whether or not to postpone the conversion to the final product to a location closer to the clients. The augmented epsilon-constraint method is applied to study the trade-off between the three pillars of sustainability and important managerial insights are derived from this study.