Optimal ordering decision in low carbon supply chain with fuzzy demand, allowable shortage and product return

Abstract

As environmental awareness increases, buyers today are learning to purchase goods and services from suppliers that can provide them with low cost, high quality, and at the same time, with environmental responsibility. The main purpose of this paper focuses on a fuzzy mathematical nonlinear programming approach to model a low carbon supply chain ordering decision problem with fuzzy demand, allowable shortage and product return. Many conceptual and analytical models have been developed for addressing the ordering problem, but they hardly considered the environmental sustainability of a supply chain and other reality conditions. Based on credibility theory, this paper presents three fuzzy mathematical programming models to select the appropriate suppliers and allocate order quantities, addressing the carbon emission, fuzzy demand, product return and shortage issues, in order to match reality more exactly. Finally, an illustrative example is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed models.