Inventory Transshipment Considering Greenhouse Gas Emissions for Sustainable Cross-Filling in Cold Supply Chains

Abstract

In recent years, sustainable supply chain management has gained increasing attention, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions throughout supply chains have been identified as one of the most important sustainability issues. This paper presents an investigation of the problem of transshipment among distribution centers (DCs) in a cold supply chain to achieve sustainable inventory cross-filling. Although transshipment is an effective tool for supply chain pooling, the possibility of increased GHG emissions raises environmental concerns. This study establishes a sustainable cold-chain logistics model that considers GHG emissions from DC storage and transshipment trucks. The new sustainable cold-chain model also reflects laden status and cargo weights of trucks for accurate emission assessment. An optimization model is also developed to minimize both GHG emissions and costs in the cold chain. Numerical simulations are conducted for diverse problem cases to examine important problem characteristics. The result analysis identifies that inventory service levels and demand variability have a strong impact on GHG emissions in transshipment; small p-values in the statistical analysis verify the significance of this effect. The different effects of demand variability and service levels on each emission source are also analyzed. The results demonstrate that transshipment among DCs can effectively reduce both GHG emissions and costs in cold supply chains. This study provides useful models and tools to assess GHG emissions and optimize decisions for the design and operation of transshipment. The proposed models will enable the assessment of sustainable alternatives and achieve sustainability objectives effectively for cold supply chains.