Production Sustainability via Supermarket Location Optimization in Assembly Lines

Masood Fathi, Amir Nourmohammadi, Morteza Ghobakhloo and Milad Yousefi
Additional contact information
Masood Fathi: Department of Production and Automation Engineering, University of Skövde, P.O. Box 408, SE-541 28 Skövde, Sweden
Amir Nourmohammadi: Department of Production and Automation Engineering, University of Skövde, P.O. Box 408, SE-541 28 Skövde, Sweden
Morteza Ghobakhloo: Department of Industrial Engineering, Minab Higher Education Center, University of Hormozgan, Bandar Abbas P.O. Box 7981634314, Iran
Milad Yousefi: Department of Industrial Engineering and Transportation, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul—UFRGS, Porto Alegre 90035-190, Brazil

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 11, 1-15

Abstract: Manufacturers worldwide are nowadays in pursuit of sustainability. In the Industry 4.0 era, it is a common practice to implement decentralized logistics areas, known as supermarkets, to achieve production sustainability via Just-in-Time material delivery at assembly lines. In this environment, manufacturers are commonly struggling with the Supermarket Location Problem (SLP), striving to efficiently decide on the number and location of supermarkets to minimize the logistics cost. To address this prevalent issue, this paper proposed a Simulated Annealing (SA) algorithm for minimizing the supermarket cost, via optimally locating supermarkets in assembly lines. The efficiency of the SA algorithm was tested by solving a set of test problems. In doing so, a holistic performance index, namely the total cost of supermarkets, was developed that included both shipment cost and the installation cost across the assembly line. The effect of workload balancing on the supermarket cost was also investigated in this study. For this purpose, the SLP was solved both before and after balancing the workload. The results of the comparison revealed that workload balancing could significantly reduce the total supermarket cost and contribute to the overall production and economic sustainability. It was also observed that the optimization of material shipment cost across the assembly line is the most influencing factor in reducing the total supermarket cost.

Keywords: assembly line; optimization; production sustainability; supermarket location; simulated annealing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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