Network-based optimization and simulation of sustainable e-supply chain management

Abstract

e-business-enabled supply chain, or e-supply chain management, is an emerging area of interest as companies begin to explore the Internet's potential to restructure supply chain relationships. This paper extends the previous research work on the environmental lifecycle impact of e-commerce to sustainable e-supply chain management for typical electronics products. The integrated e-supply chain network structure is modeled to account for material and information flows throughout the supply chain, including product demanufacture and reuse of materials and components. Various parameters defining business, technology and environmental issues of the e-supply chain are represented and optimized in a fuzzy logic based network to model data uncertainty and information gaps. A fuzzy multi-objective optimization method is proposed to-find the best possible balance between supply-chain variables, e-business strategies and environmental performance. As a case study, an e-supply-chain: management of typical desktop personal computers is modeled and optimized. Discrete event system simulation techniques are used to examine the stochastic behavior of the optimal network and further analyze supply chain performance.