In many practical distribution networks, managers face significant uncertainties in demand, local price of building facilities, transportation cost, and macro and microeconomic parameters. This paper addresses design of distribution networks in a supply chain system which optimizes the performance of distribution networks subject to required service level. This service level, which is consider...

In today’s competitive market place, companies seek an efficient structure of supply chain so as to provide customers with highest value and achieve competitive advantage. This requires a broader perspective than just the borders of an individual company during a supply chain. This paper investigates an aggregate production planning problem integrated with distribution issues in a supply chain ...

Abstract This paper proposes an optimization scheme of the transportation assignment for the oil product secondary distribution. Firstly, for the multi-variety oil product a cost model of the secondary distribution system for the oil product is established. Then a transportation assignment scheme is designed with the table-manipulation method. Based on the proposed transportation assignment sch...

Converting wood to grid quality methane allows to distribute a CO2 free, renewable enery resource in a conventional energy distribution system and use it in transportation applications. Using a previously developed thermo–economic process model for thermochemical production of synthetic natural gas from wood and applying a multi–objective optimisation algorithm, the present paper assesses the p...

The rapidly growing biofuel industry poses considerable challenges to its supply chain network design and operations. In this chapter, we introduce key characteristics of the biofuel supply chain that comprises of feedstock production, biomass logistics, biofuel production and distribution. We then discuss the recent literature on biofuel supply chain models. Using an illustrative biofuel suppl...

The combination of current and planned 2007 U.S. ethanol production capacity is 50 billion L/yr, one-third of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) target of 136 billion L of biofuels by 2022. In this study, we evaluate transportation impacts and infrastructure requirements for the use of E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) in light-duty vehicles using a combination of corn and ce...

We develop an integrated mixed-integer linear programming model for production-distribution and transportation planning in three-stage supply chains (SCs). The model has two versions, the fully optimized version (FOV) and the less fully optimized (LFOV). Each of the versions determines the optimal quantity of each product to be produced at each plant in each period, kept in inventory at each pl...

This research aims to apply a model to the study and analysis of environmental and natural resource costs created in supply chains of goods and services produced in Thailand, and propose indicators for environmental problem management, caused by goods and services production, based on concepts of sustainable production and consumer behavior. The research showed that the highest environmental co...

Nacrtak The importance of forest wood chips as fuel for energy production will increase relative to sawmill by-products. The additional production is not a question of potential (harvesting residues, wood from thinning, coppice stands and short rotation forests) but more so a question of economic feasibility. The analyses of different chip production systems resulted in the identification of tw...