Assessing the environmental benefits of horizontal cooperation using a location-inventory model
- PDF / 754,979 Bytes
- 25 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 106 Downloads / 236 Views
Assessing the environmental benefits of horizontal cooperation using a location-inventory model Thomas Hacardiaux1
· Jean-Sébastien Tancrez1
© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract As customers are aware of the climate change, eco-friendly strategies have become a competitive advantage for companies. In particular, they are aiming to reduce their carbon footprint along their supply chain. In this context, substantial CO2 emissions reductions can be reached by horizontal cooperation, i.e. the collaboration of companies that work at the same level of the supply chain. In this paper, we evaluate these reductions using a location-inventory model which minimizes facility opening, transportation, cycle inventory, ordering and safety stock costs. To understand the impact of different market and partners characteristics on the CO2 emissions reductions, we compute a large set of numerical experiments, varying several key parameters (vehicles capacity, facility opening cost, inventory holding cost, order cost, demand variability and distances). Results show that horizontal cooperation reduces CO2 emissions by 16% on average. Moreover, horizontal cooperation is more effective in decreasing the carbon footprint of companies with low facility opening costs and low order costs, carrying expensive products (high unit holding cost) on a market with a high demand variability and a vast market area. Keywords CO2 emissions reductions · Environmental benefits · Horizontal cooperation · Supply chain network design · Location-inventory problem
1 Introduction Nowadays, the climate disruption caused by the increase in greenhouse gases is beyond doubt (Ramanathan and Feng 2009; Nair 2016). The objective is to keep the global
B
Thomas Hacardiaux [email protected] Jean-Sébastien Tancrez [email protected]
1
CORE - Center for Operations Research and Econometrics, Université catholique de Louvain, Chaussée de Binche, 151, 7000 Mons, Belgium
123
T. Hacardiaux, J.-S. Tancrez
temperature to a maximum of 2 ◦ C above pre-industrial level (UNFCCC 2015). This increase represents the limit to avoid dangerous impacts on humanity. Experts evaluate that the possibility to limit the global warming to 1.5 ◦ C is already out of reach and that two thirds of the available resources for keeping the warming below 2 ◦ C has already been consumed (Rogelj et al. 2016). Citizens and politicians are now aware of the climate change and look to limit its expansion (Harris et al. 2011b). Therefore, public authorities develop restrictive regulations notably aiming at limiting the pollution produced by companies (Linton et al. 2007). For their part, customers increase the pressure on companies by purchasing preferentially responsible products (Comas Martí et al. 2015). Eco-friendly strategies become a competitive advantage for companies (Seuring and Müller 2008). For example, Walmart aims to reduce CO2 emissions at each step of its supply chain and displays the estimated carbon footprint of their products (Plamb
Data Loading...
