Dynamic Planning of Reusable Containers in a Close-loop Supply Chain under Carbon Emission Constrain

Nowadays, companies need to collect and deliver goods from and to their depots and their customers. Reusable containers are considered as a greener choice and a cost saving strategy. This paper addresses a dynamic management of reusable containers (e.g. gases bottles, wood pallets, maritime containers, etc.) in a closed-loop supply chain. The aim of the study is to find an optimal lot sizing and assignment strategy that minimizes the cost of reusable container management under the environmental constraints. In this study, a new integer-linear-programming model and two hybrid approaches based on the genetic algorithm are proposed to solve the problem. The second hybrid method is enhanced within a local search based on variable neighborhood search (VNS). The numerical results show the performance of the two hybrid approaches in terms of solution quality and response time.