A Hybrid Approach to Sustainable Supply Chain Optimization

This paper describes the hybrid approach to optimization of decision problems in sustainable supply chain (SSC). The hybrid approach proposed here combines the strengths of mathematical programming (MP) and constraint logic programming (CLP), which leads to a significant reduction in the search time necessary to find the optimal solution, and allows solving larger problems. The hybrid method appears to be not only as good as either of its components used independently but in most cases it is much more effective. The simplified models of cost optimization presented in the article illustrate the advantages of the approach. For these models, the use of hybrid approach allows obtaining optimal solutions ten times faster.