Sustainable supply chain management for perishable products in emerging markets: An integrated location-inventory-routing model

The demand for perishable products in emerging markets has been increasing. However, the perishability of products brings tremendous challenges for firms to build a sustainable supply chain. In this paper, we propose an integrated model of location-inventory-routing for perishable products, considering the factors of carbon emissions and product freshness. First, the economic cost, carbon emission levels, and freshness of the perishable products are analyzed. Second, with the goals of achieving the lowest economic cost and carbon emissions and the highest product freshness, a multi-objective planning model is developed, and constraints are established based on the actual location-inventory-routing situation. Third, the YALMIP toolbox is used to solve the model, and the optimal solution to this complex multi-objective problem is obtained. Finally, the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method are verified by the case study, as well as the sensitivity vehicle speed to the results. It is found that the integrated model proposed in this paper is able to significantly improve the efficiency of perishable goods supply chain management from the perspective of global optimization, and vehicle speed is able to significantly affect economic costs and carbon emissions.