Environmental constraints in joint product and supply chain design optimization

Environmental concerns are increasingly taken into account by companies, owing to the significant legal and consumer issues being raised today. This paper considers the environmental constraints inherent in the design of a product family and its supply chain. Mathematical models are proposed for optimizing costs in the face of carbon emissions restrictions and for optimizing carbon emissions, given the need to limit costs in the current economic climate. A method is provided, along with accompanying graphical illustrations, to enable the analysis of each of the three parts of the cost and carbon emissions issue, that is, production, transportation, and component, on three different academic case studies. Analysis of the models applied on our case studies illustrates that, while optimizing carbon emissions is extremely costly, reducing them can be achieved efficiently. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.