Sustainable Pricing-Production-Workforce-Routing Problem for Perishable Products by Considering Demand Uncertainty; A Case Study from the Dairy Industry

Abstract:The production routing problem seeks to simultaneously optimize production, routing, and inventory decisions for the plant and the suppliers. In this article an integrated multi-objective sustainable pricing-production-workforce-routing problem is presented for perishable products. Total profit, workforce planning, and vehicle fuel consumption are considered as objective functions due to the importance of operational performance, social, and environmental concerns. The application of the proposed approach is investigated using real case data from a dairy product supply chain. Furthermore, a new solution approach, called Fuzzy Domination Self-Learning Non-Dominated Sorting Algorithm (FDSL-NSGA-II), is developed to solve the problem. The results show that the Pareto solutions of FDSLNSGA-II outperform those of the classic NSGA-II. Moreover, the findings show that the proposed model can create a surpassing tradeoff between the various aspects of a supply chain, including production, distribution, and workforce planning. In addition, it concurrently optimizes the selling price and protects the environment from the negative impacts of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). A comprehensive analysis of the results reveals several managerial insights for decision makers in the logistics industry.