Environmentally conscious planning and design of supply chain networks

In this paper, a methodology is presented for the explicit inclusion of environmental impact assessment criteria as part of strategic investment decisions related to supply chain networks. At this level, the earliest opportunities exist for a company to influence both its future market competitiveness and environmental performance. Trying to give consideration to not only the traditional economic criteria, but also to the multiple environmental concerns, inevitably results in the design task being formulated as a multi-objective optimisation problem. In this way, the simultaneous consideration of multiple selection criteria provides an ideal platform for exploring trade-offs upon which environmentally conscious business decision-making can be based.