A MILP Model for Reusable Containers Management in Automotive Plastic Components Supply Chain

Abstract

The automotive sector operates under the just-in-time (JIT) approach, but variations in demand mean that first-tier suppliers generate an accumulation of stocks at second-tier suppliers. Second-tier suppliers have a limitation of storage space, reason to limit their production to the size of the warehouse, but always attending the first-tier demand plan. A further limitation of the second-tier supplier is the number of empty reusable containers that the first-tier supplier delivers to the second-tier supplier and that are used to package the injected plastic components. The reusable filled containers are returned to the first-tier supplier, according to the plastic components demand plan. Thus, a closed-loop logistic is carried out between first and second-tier suppliers. This study proposes, from the second-tier perspective, a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model for fleet sizing decisions of the cardboard containers in a production system. The model determines the number of cardboard containers that second-tier supplier has to use when the production is higher than the number of available reusable containers.

A literature review and analytical framework of the sustainability of reusable packaging

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Coordinated Scheduling of Two-Agent Production and Transportation Based on Non-Cooperative Game

“…In a distributed manufacturing environment, manufacturing equipments and individual agents may be in various geographical locations, and the manufacturing capacity of resources should be taken into account together with the synergy between transportation and production. The coordination of production and transportation is common in steel manufacturing, automotive sector suppliers and other industries [5][6][7][8].…”