Multimodal multi-flow problem with transformation : Application to waste supply chain

Abstract

This paper presents a new tactical optimization problem for non-hazardous waste and end-life product supply chain. Waste transport and recycling become crucial in our modern society, with a huge environmental and economic impact for industrials and communities. Operations on products during transport such as grinding or sorting allows companies to densify transports and reduce the overall supply cost. Integrating these new aspects, we introduce a new problem we term the multi-commodity, multi-flow problem with transformations and propose a linear mathematical model to solve it. With an application to a waste transport company and a performance benchmark on a linear solver, we show the pertinence of the model in a real case study and its scalability for more complex situations.