Multi-company collaborative supply chain management with economical and environmental considerations

Abstract

Process systems must interact with other systems for a better production performance. The interaction among process systems is usually established when these systems exchange materials such as steam and electricity. Integrated analysis of different process systems can provide valuable insight and also identify improvements in the financial and environmental performance of industrial supply chain systems. A systematic approach to identify the synergy among different process systems has been developed. The proposed approach uses three steps; the generation of standardized models for process units, integration of process unit models for the supply chain system and solution of the model and analysis of the results. The developed approach is illustrated with an example that is a simplified version of a real problem and tested on an industrial problem. It is shown that important improvements in the cost and release of environmentally harmful emissions can be accomplished by integration of different process systems.