Supply chain optimization of continuous process industries with sustainability considerations

Today's optimization of continuous process industries should be exerted on the scope of whole enterprise supply chain, from the raw material purchase stage to product distribution stage, with sustainability considerations. Su stainability involves the multiple objectives of social, economic, resource s and environmental sustainability; some of them are conflicting. In this s tudy, goal programming (GP) model is proposed to address this multi-objecti ve problem with the integration of non-relaxable constraints and relaxable constraints. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP), a multi-objective decisi on making method, is used to evaluate the priorities of goals and weights o f deviation variables. The application of this approach is illustrated thro ugh a case study on sustainable supply chain optimization and scheduling of a petrochemical complex. The results obtained show that this approach is a viable tool and offers good communication with decision-maker. (C) 2000 El sevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.