Network design towards sustainability of Chinese baijiu industry from a supply chain perspective

Abstract

Sustainable supply chain network design has attracted great attention of academia and industry in recent years. Baijiu is one of the world's oldest distilled alcoholic beverages and plays a significant role in Chinese culture and Chinese people's daily life. As the production and consumption of Baijiu have a significant influence on the economic, environmental, and social performance of supply chainmanagement, sustainable supply chain network design decisions are critical to the long-term success of the industry. In concertwith the rapidly growing Chinese economy, there is a growing demand for a sustainable Baijiu industry. Therefore, this paper constructs and optimizes a network decision-support model for a sustainable Baijiu industry network design. To achieve this, the Baijiu supply chain is examined and a model is proposed for a design that encompasses economic (costs), environmental (carbon emissions), and social (local employment and regional per capita GDP) dimensions. R language programming is then applied to solve the model. A case example indicated that S1 was the optimal decision for reducing costs, S2 was the optimal solution for minimizing carbon emissions, and S3 was the best for maximizing the social impact. Considering the situation of the Baijiu industry and the focal enterprise, it was concluded that S1 would be the best solution for the case company. And the results verified the effectiveness of the framework. This paper develops a systematic and effective approach that decision-makers can use to conduct sustainable network design for Baijiu enterprises.