Designing a Sustainable Supply Chain | AIChE

Designing a Sustainable Supply Chain

This article proposes the use of the P-graph (process graph) framework together with sustainability and profitability considerations in the design of supply chains as a foundational technique to generate feasible alternative structures for supply chains.

Supply chain design is important because supply chains are the means by which people, organizations, resources, information, and other factors are structured for the purpose of delivering products and services to people and organizations. The ability of modern industry and commerce to function relies in one form or another on supply chains. Given current and foreseeable conditions across the globe with respect to population, consumption increase with prosperity, limits on emissions, and raw material availability, it is likely that supply chains will need to operate in a business climate where sustainability is increasingly important. 

This article proposes the use of the P-graph (process graph) framework together with sustainability and profitability considerations in the design of supply chains as a foundational technique to generate feasible alternative structures for supply chains. The P-graph framework offers a relatively simple and efficient means of creating and optimizing networks that meet particular design requirements. The procedure is to first establish the basic design requirements in terms of feedstocks, products, available capital, and production pathways (including equipment) to be used. Then, the P-graph framework is used to generate alternative supply chains, all of which are feasible. The alternative supply chains can then be analyzed and evaluated based on cost, profitability, and sustainability considerations, or any other criteria. The creation and solution of P-graph models can be facilitated with freely available software tools (PNS Studio and PNS Draw).

Date 

January, 2015