Aggregate production planning (APP) that is an important concept of supply chain management (SCM), is one of the tools to determine production rates, inventory levels, and workforce requirements for fulfilling customer demands in a multi-period setting. Traditional APP models employ a single objective function to optimize monetary issues only. In this paper, we present a multiobjective APP model to analyze economic, social, environmental, and cultural pillars inclusively; moreover, each pillar includes several sub-pillars in the model. The resulting model includes an accurate representation of the problem with binary and continuous variables under sustainability considerations. We illustrate the effectiveness of the model in an appliance manufacturer and solve the problem using an exact solution method for multi-objective mixed-integer linear programs (MOMILP). We find a large number of the non-dominated (ND) points in the objective function space and analyze their trade-offs systematically. We show how this framework supports multiple criteria decision making process in the APP problems in the presence of sustainability considerations. Our approach provides a comprehensive analysis of the ND points of sustainable APP (SAPP) problems, and hence, the trade-offs of objective functions are insightful to the decision makers.

Most real-world problems involve multiple conflicting criteria. These problems are called multicriteria/multi-objective optimization problems (MOOP). The main task in solving MOOPs is to find the nondominated (ND) points in the objective space or efficient solutions in the decision space. A ND point is a point in the objective space with objective function values that cannot be improved without worsening another objective function. In this paper, we present a new method that generates the set of ND points for a multiobjective mixed-integer linear program (MOMILP). The Generator of ND and Efficient Frontier (GoNDEF) for MOMILPs finds that the ND points represented as points, line segments, and facets consist of every type of ND point. First, the GoNDEF sets integer variables to the values that result in ND points. Fixing integer variables to specific values results in a multi-objective linear program (MOLP). This MOLP has its own set of ND points. A subset of this set establishes a subset of the ND points set of the MOMILP. In this paper, we present an extensive theoretical analysis of the GoNDEF and illustrate its effectiveness on a set of instance problems.

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