A multicriteria Master Planning DSS for a sustainable humanitarian supply chain

Journal article (2018)

Authors

Laura Laguna-Salvadó Université de Toulouse
Matthieu Lauras Université de Toulouse
Uche Okongwu Toulouse Business School
M. Comes System Engineering - TPM , University of Agder
Research Group
System Engineering (TPM) (TU Delft)
Copyright: © 2018 Laura Laguna-Salvadó, Matthieu Lauras, Uche Okongwu, M. Comes
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-018-2882-3
Sustainability Humanitarian supply chain Disaster relief operations Master Planning Multi-objective decision support system Sustainable supply chain
More Info
expand_more

Published Date

2018

Language

English

Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Faculty

Technology, Policy and Management

Department

Multi Actor Systems

Research Group

System Engineering

Abstract

Humanitarian supply chains (HSCs) contribute significantly to achieving effective and rapid responses to natural and man-made disasters. Though humanitarian organizations have during the last decades made considerable efforts to improve the response to crises in terms of effectiveness and efficiency, HSCs are still faced with so many challenges, one of which is the incorporation of sustainability dimensions (economic, social and environmental) in the management of their supply chains. In the literature, some authors have highlighted that the planning and achievement of sustainability performance objectives in humanitarian operations is hindered by the lack of decision support systems (DSS). Therefore, this paper proposes a multi-objective Master Planning DSS for managing sustainable HSCs. This Master Planning DSS includes: (1) the definition of a set of metrics for measuring the performance of a sustainable HSC; (2) an algorithm to solve the multi-objective problem; and (3) a Master Planning mathematical model to support the tactical planning of the sustainable HSC. Using the information gathered from field research and the literature, an illustrative numerical example is presented to demonstrate the implementation and utility of the proposed DSS. The results show that the order in which the three sustainability dimensions (economic, social and environmental) are prioritized has some impact on the performance measures. Therefore, it is important to fix a tolerance that would enable to obtain an acceptable balance (trade-off) between the three sustainability objectives, in line with the prioritization choice of the decision maker. The paper can be accessed via the following link: https://rdcu.be/NUkB
as a part of Springer’s SharedIt Initiative.