Multimodal Transportation-Based Reconfiguration Towards Sustainable Supply Chain Management

Abstract: Even though multimodal transportation has been frequently applied in international supply chains, it has been scares adopted in domestic agri-food supply chains to achieve sustainability. With the perishable nature of agri-food, the reduction in food miles and travel time has directly impacted the receiving quality for customers. Furthermore, transportation costs are directly influencing the price fluctuations of the vegetables. Being restricted to the unimodal transportation structure results in a high empty truck return frequency, which is leading to global warming potential (GWP). Therefore, it is timely to investigate how multimodal transportation strategies can impact reducing food miles, lead time, transportation costs, and emissions. In this study, multimodal transportation has been tested for the Sri Lankan main-stream vegetable supply chain, combining truck and railway transportation. A sample of farmers, economic centers, and retailers was derived using multistage sampling combined with the Perato principle at each stage. The existing and multimodal transportation adopted configurations were simulated as an agent-based simulation model in a simulation environment and compared in terms of food miles, lead time, transportation cost, and emissions. Results of the simulation model demonstrated that the application of multimodal transportation strategies to the main stream vegetable supply chain in Sri Lanka was capable of reducing food miles, lead time, transportation cost, GWP and empty truck return significantly. In further studies, intermodal transportation strategies can also be combined with multimodal transportation strategies to test potential further reductions in performance measures.

 
Have trouble accessing an IISE presentation? Login to your account at IISE Conference Archives and click "Search Archives"

If you are interested in the Sustainable Development division of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE), become a member today!

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *