Integrating lean, resilient, and sustainable practices in supply chain network: mathematical modelling and the AUGMECON2 approach

Nowadays, organisations try to find a proper method to increase their competitiveness. Lean, resilient, and sustainable are top-hole managerial practices in supply chain management. This paper tries to study the effects of integrating lean, resilient, and sustainable practices in the supply chain network (SCN). To this end, a new multi-objective mixed-integer programming is developed in such a way that lean manufacturing is implemented in a resilient-sustainable SCN. The objective functions try to maximise job opportunities and minimise costs, environmental effects, and delivery time. Resilience has been taken into account to tackle the lack of raw materials during disruptions by implementing multiple sourcing in the model. Besides, to devote more attention to sustainable practices, backup suppliers have been prioritised based on sustainability criteria. The academics were enquired to rate sustainability criteria for selecting a backup supplier. Finally, a fuzzy TOPSIS method was used to rank the backup suppliers based on sustainability criteria. The improved version of augmented epsilon-constraint (AUGMECON2) was applied to cope with multi-objectivity of the problem. The results indicated a synergistic effect among leanness, resilience, and sustainability in the supply chain. Also, it turned out that sustainable backup supplier selection boosts the synergistic effect among these three concepts.

Automated summary

This study investigates the effects of integrating lean, resilient, and sustainable practices in the supply chain network using a new multi-objective mixed-integer programming approach. The results demonstrate a synergistic effect among leanness, resilience, and sustainability in enhancing competitiveness, with sustainable backup supplier selection boosting the synergy among these three concepts.