A Sustainable Multi-Objective Model for Capacitated-Electric-Vehicle-Routing-Problem Considering Hard and Soft Time Windows as Well as Partial Recharging.

Due to the high pollution of the transportation sector, nowadays the role of electric vehicles has been noticed more and more by governments, organizations, and environmentally friendly people. On the other hand, the problem of electric vehicle routing (EVRP) has been widely studied in recent years. This paper deals with an extended version of EVRP, in which electric vehicles (EVs) deliver goods to customers. The limited battery capacity of EVs causes their operational domains to be less than those of gasoline vehicles. For this purpose, several charging stations are considered in this study for EVs. In addition, depending on the operational domain, a full charge may not be needed, which reduces the operation time. Therefore, partial recharging is also taken into account in the present research. This problem is formulated as a multi-objective integer linear programming model, whose objective functions include economic, environmental, and social aspects. Then, the preemptive fuzzy goal programming method (PFGP) is exploited as an exact method to solve small-sized problems. Also, two hybrid meta-heuristic algorithms inspired by nature, including MOSA, MOGWO, MOPSO, and NSGAII_TLBO, are utilized to solve large-sized problems. The results obtained from solving the numerous test problems demonstrate that the hybrid meta-heuristic algorithm can provide efficient solutions in terms of quality and non-dominated solutions in all test problems. In addition, the performance of the algorithms was compared in terms of four indexes: time, MID, MOCV, and HV. Moreover, statistical analysis is performed to investigate whether there is a significant difference between the performance of the algorithms. The results indicate that the MOSA algorithm performs better in terms of the time index. On the other hand, the NSGA-II-TLBO algorithm outperforms in terms of the MID, MOCV, and HV indexes.

Supplier selection in the industry 4.0 era by using a fuzzy cognitive map and hesitant fuzzy linguistic VIKOR methodology.

Organizations will be increasingly concerned about maintaining their positions in today's changing world, the high-tech era, and the emergence of innovative technologies because of the industrial revolutions. Everyone has come to believe that to survive and continue their constructive roles, they must achieve competitive advantages by working based on the trends. It is undeniable that the introduction of Industry 4.0 has had a significant impact on enterprises, organizations, and, of course, supply chains. In the meantime, selecting a supplier is one of the main strategic decisions of the organization because choosing the right supplier leads to increasing profitability, improving market competition, better accountability, enhancing product quality, and reducing costs. While the issue of supplier evaluation has been one of the interesting topics for researchers in recent decades, its development in the fourth supply chain generation needs further consideration. In this regard, current technologies in the fourth-generation industrial revolution, methods, and criteria used in previous studies based on industry 4.0 and before that are reviewed separately. By reviewing previous articles and experts' opinions, thirteen sub-criteria considering industry 4.0 have been identified for selecting suppliers in three categories, economic, environmental, and social. The weight of each criterion has been determined using a set of fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs) and considering the centrality of criteria in the concept of communication networks. To prioritize the suppliers, the hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets (HFLTS) VIKOR method has been used in hesitant fuzzy linguistic terms. Finally, a case study is introduced to illustrate the effectiveness and usefulness of our integrated methodology and prioritize its four suppliers.

An integrated approach for a sustainable supplier selection based on Industry 4.0 concept.

The recent advances in sustainable supply chain management are integrated with Industry 4.0 concepts. This study develops a new integrated model to consider the sustainability and Industry 4.0 criteria for the supplier selection management. The proposed approach consists of the fuzzy best worst method (FBWM) and the two-stage fuzzy inference system (FIS) to assess the selection of suppliers. Firstly, this study determines a comprehensive list of Industry 4.0 and sustainability criteria along with their definitions. Then, the importance weight of each criterion is computed by the FBWM. Subsequently, a two-stage FIS is devoted to nominate the suppliers' performance with regard to the sustainability and Industry 4.0 criteria. To show the applicability of our integrated model, a case study for a textile company in Iran is provided. Finally, some sensitivity analyses are done to assess the efficiency of the proposed integrated approach. One finding is to establish a decision-making framework to evaluate suppliers separately, rather than relatively in a fuzzy environment using Industry 4.0 and sustainability criteria.

A hybrid fuzzy-stochastic multi-criteria ABC inventory classification using possibilistic chance-constrained programming.

Inventory classification is a fundamental issue in the development of inventory policy that assigns each inventory item to several classes with different levels of importance. This classification is the main determinant of a suitable inventory control policy of inventory classes. Therefore, a great deal of research is done on solving this problem. Usually, the problem of inventory classification is considered in a multi-criteria and uncertain environment. The proposed method in this paper inspired by the notion of heterogeneous decision-making problems in which decision-makers deal with different types of data. To this aim, a mathematical modeling-based approach is proposed considering different types of uncertainty in classification information. Demand information is considered to be stochastic due to its time-varying nature and cost information is considered to be fuzzy due to its cognitive ambiguity. A hybrid algorithm based on chance-constrained and possibilistic programming is proposed to solve the problems. Considering the stochastic nature of demand information, solving the proposed model using the hybrid algorithm, the classification of items to three classes of extremely important, class A, moderately important, class B, and relatively unimportant, class C, items are determined along with a minimum inventory level required to deal with the stochasticity of demands information. The proposed approach is applied to a case study of classifying 51 inventory items. The obtained results assigned 22%, 39%, and 39% of the items to A, B, and C classes, respectively.

Analyzing the Status of Sustainable Development in the Manufacturing Sector Using Multi-Expert Multi-Criteria Fuzzy Decision-Making and Integrated Triple Bottom Lines.

A sustainable manufacturing company depends on the developments in three aspects in order to minimize harmful impacts on the environment, improve the social relations, and simultaneously maximize the economic benefits. Despite the increasing types of investigations that researchers have carried out in environmental and economic aspects, the minimum attention has been paid to social relations. In response to this deficiency, this paper proposes a new framework to obtain the overall sustainability index in manufacturing companies by encapsulating the sustainability criteria/sub-criteria. This article collected 33 sub-criteria for five pillars of sustainability as social, environment, economic, technological advancement, and performance management. The key contributions of this paper are highlighted as the hierarchical method that obtains the status of sustainability in uncertain conditions, the ability to identify the weak points, and a new framework for gathering the data about sustainability performance in manufacturing companies. The findings of this paper will aid both policymakers and decision-makers to assess the sustainability status of manufacturing systems and improve the performances of them.

Cold Chain Logistics Management of Medicine with an Integrated Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Method.

Medicine is the main means to reduce cancer mortality. However, some medicines face various risks during transportation and storage due to the particularity of medicines, which must be kept at a low temperature to ensure their quality. In this regard, it is of great significance to evaluate and select drug cold chain logistics suppliers from different perspectives to ensure the quality of medicines and reduce the risks of transportation and storage. To solve such a multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem, this paper proposes an integrated model based on the combination of the SWARA (stepwise weight assessment ratio analysis) and CoCoSo (combined compromise solution) methods under the probabilistic linguistic environment. An adjustment coefficient is introduced to the SWARA method to derive criteria weights, and an improved CoCoSo method is proposed to determine the ranking of alternatives. The two methods are extended to the probabilistic linguistic environment to enhance the applicability of the two methods. A case study on the selection of drug cold chain logistics suppliers is presented to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed integrated MCDM model. The advantages of the proposed methods are highlighted through comparative analyses.