A Production Inventory Model for Deteriorating Items with Collaborative Preservation Technology Investment Under Carbon Tax

Decisions on Pricing, Sustainability Effort, and Carbon Cap under Wholesale Price and Cost-Sharing Contracts

Rapid economic growth and industrialization have brought material abundance and convenience, but also social and environmental problems such as global warming, climate change, and ozone depletion. For this reason, the public and governments have continued to make efforts to reduce carbon oxide emissions worldwide over the past few decades. To achieve this mission, cap-and-trade regulations have been introduced as one of the most effective market-based mechanisms to control carbon emissions. Accordingly, sustainability efforts, including the development of green products and innovating manufacturing technologies, are being made by companies in supply chains to reduce their carbon emissions. In the context of sustainability innovations and carbon emission constraints, this article investigates pricing decisions, the degree of sustainability efforts, and carbon caps under two different supply chain contracts—in this case, wholesale price contract and cost-sharing contract. This article establishes a Stackelberg game model under each of the supply chain contract types and presents the equilibrium decisions made by players of the game. Major findings of this article reveal that (i) the performance of the supply chain is considerably affected by the presence of a carbon cap; (ii) the higher the carbon cap set by a government is, the more sustainability innovation efforts the supply chain makes; and (iii) the supply chain can improve its profitability and its sustainability under a cost-sharing contract.

Issues in sustainable supply chain's futuristic technologies: a bibliometric and research trend analysis

This paper presents a systematic review and bibliometric analysis in sustainable supply chain's futuristic technologies. The analysis involves 1596 articles published in the Scopus database from 1990 to 2020. The analysis examines the research outcomes by observing trends in journals, authorship, and keywords. The outcomes are visualized using VOSviewer to show the graphical network of co-authorship and the author's keywords. The results show that this research area has been a growing trend since 2016 and by 2020. The Journal of Cleaner Production was a leading journal in this area between 2016 and 2020, followed by Sustainability (Switzerland). The content analysis led to a classification of the articles into four main categories and sub-categories. The strategic diagram is used to reveal the emerging research themes analysis during the last 5 years (2016-2020) and to present future research. The data trending or emerging shows that technologies such as the technology by using combustion energy, renewable energy, and electric vehicles have been developing substantially. The research hotspots of the sustainable supply chain include, i.e., life cycle assessment (LCA), green investment, and carbon tax. Finally, the analysis also shows the research gaps that point a direction for future research.Graphical abstract.

The Role of the Discount Policy of Prepayment on Environmentally Friendly Inventory Management

Nowadays, more and more consumers consider environmentally friendly products in their purchasing decisions. Companies need to adapt to these changes while paying attention to standard business systems such as payment terms. The purpose of this study is to optimize the entire profit function of a retailer and to find the optimal selling price and replenishment cycle when the demand rate depends on the price and carbon emission reduction level. This study investigates an economic order quantity model that has a demand function with a positive impact of carbon emission reduction besides the selling price. In this model, the supplier requests payment in advance on the purchased cost while offering a discount according to the payment in the advanced decision. Three different types of payment-in-advance cases are applied: (1) payment in advance with equal numbers of instalments, (2) payment in advance with a single instalment, and (3) the absence of payment in advance. Numerical examples and sensitivity analysis illustrate the proposed model. Here, the total profit increases for all three cases with higher values of carbon emission reduction level. Further, the study finds that the profit becomes maximum for case 2, whereas the selling price and cycle length become minimum. This study considers the sustainable inventory model with payment-in-advance settings when the demand rate depends on the price and carbon emission reduction level. From the literature review, no researcher has undergone this kind of study in the authors’ knowledge.

Recent Trends in Sustainable Inventory Models: A Literature Review

Greenhouse gas emissions are increasing global warming significantly, hence the need for manufacturing companies to include sustainability strategies in their supply chain to reduce emissions generated by their operations. This article aims to provide a systematic literature review on integrating sustainability issues into inventory management models to support scholars and practitioners in decision-making processes according to their market requirements. Thus, this paper discusses the most relevant papers published on inventory management topics that consider environmental criteria such as greenhouse gas emissions, ecological quality controls, unsold inventory, and fixed carbon costs. Therefore, we have extended the literature review to incorporate sustainability considerations in inventory models involving an industry’s environmental and social effects. As a result, in this article, a detailed analysis of the existing literature and related weaknesses provide meaningful discussions on crucial issues for future field research avenues in the field.

Coordination Mechanism of Dual-Channel Supply Chains Considering Retailer Innovation Inputs

In response to the online channels established by manufacturers, physical retailers are starting to offer innovative services, which will intensify conflicts between manufacturers and retailers. Considering that the conflict will affect the operation efficiency and sustainable development of the supply chain, the coordination mechanism of a dual-channel supply chain has been established. In this study, we construct the Stackelberg game model based on consumer utility theory to analyze the complex mechanism of retailers’ innovation input level affecting supply chain operation and design the double coordination mechanism. The results show that: (1) an optimal combination of wholesale prices, retail prices and innovation input levels can optimize the operational efficiency of the supply chain, (2) Noncooperation among channel members affects the retailer’s product pricing, decreases the market share of the physical channel and increases the market demand of manufacturers, (3) The dual coordination mechanism can alleviate channel conflicts, which can improve the operational efficiency of the supply chain. This study provides several insights on the theory of organizational coordination and sustainable development in conflicts of dual-channel supply chains.

Sustainable Production–Inventory Model in Technical Cooperation on Investment to Reduce Carbon Emissions

Carbon cap-and-trade and carbon offsets are common and important carbon emission reduction policies in many countries. In addition, carbon emissions from business activities can be effectively reduced through specific capital investments in green technologies. Nevertheless, such capital investments are costly and not all enterprises can afford these investments. Therefore, if all members of a supply chain agree to share the investments in the facilities, the supply chain can reduce carbon emissions and generate more profit. Under carbon cap-and-trade and carbon tax policies, this study proposes a production–inventory model in which the buyer and vendor in the integrated supply chain agree to co-invest funds to reduce carbon emissions. We planned to integrate production, delivery, replenishment, and technology to reduce carbon emissions so as to maximize the total profit of the supply chain system. Several examples are simulated and the sensitivity analysis of the main parameters is carried out. The optimal solutions and joint total profit under various carbon emission policies are also compared. The future carbon emission control trend is expected to enable companies to share risks by co-investing and developing sustainable supply chains.

Shipment Policy for an Economic Production Quantity Model Considering Imperfection and Transportation Cost

Determining replenishment lot size and number of shipments in a traditional production setup has been of great interest among researchers during the last decades. In order to survive modern competition, the manufacturer has to make good decisions about the lot size that is to be shipped to the retailer. Recently, several researchers have developed mathematical models for modelling different real-world situations; however, these models are lacking due to a combination of imperfection in process and shipment lot sizing. Therefore, in the proposed research, shipment policy for an imperfect production setup has been developed with transportation costs taken into consideration. The model analyzed lot sizing for manufacturers and retailers with imperfections in terms of equally sized shipments. Furthermore, an all-unit-discount policy for shipment is considered in the proposed research, and at the end, numerical computation and sensitivity analyses are carried out to gain more insight into the specifications of the model.

Optimal Inventory Control Strategies for Deteriorating Items with a General Time-Varying Demand under Carbon Emission Regulations

Climate warming nowadays has caused people to increasingly enhance public awareness about carbon emissions from industries. In the storing industry, inventory management for deteriorating items is crucial in the business competition. To slow down the deterioration and ensure the quality of products, the items are usually stored in certain temperature-controlled environment. However, a lot of carbon emissions of the inventory system are caused by these warehousing activities. In a finite panning period, this paper studies a continuous review inventory system and proposes inventory models to analyze the impacts of carbon emissions on inventory system for deteriorating items with a general time-varying demand, in which shortages are allowed, and the customer demand during shortage period is partially backlogged till the next replenishment. Under carbon emission regulations, the existence and uniqueness of the optimal solution to each model is explored and comparisons of optimality among the proposed models are given. Numerical examples and robust analysis of the models are presented to illustrate the applicability in practice. Some management insights about inventory policies and emission reduction strategies are obtained.