Designing sustainable supply chains

A supply chain is a complex and dynamic supply and demand network of agents, activities, resources, technology and information involved in moving products or services from supplier to customer. The suitability of supply chains can be measured by multiple criteria, such as environmental, social, economic, and others. Finding an equilibrium between the interests of members of a sustainable supply chain is a very important problem. The main objective of the paper is to analyze the design of sustainable supply chains and to create a comprehensive model and solution methods for designing sustainable supply chains. Multiple criteria analysis and game theory is a natural choice to effectively analyze and model decision making in such multiple agent situation with multiple criteria where the outcome depends on the choice made by every agent. Multiple criteria analysis is useful for assessing sustainability of supply chains. The De Novo approach focusses on designing optimal systems. Game theory has become a useful instrument in the analysis of supply chains with multiple agents. Games are used for behavior modeling of supply chains; they focus on the allocation of resources, capacities, costs, revenues and profits. The coopetition concept combines the advantages of both competition and cooperation into new dynamics, which can be used to not only generate more profits, but also to change the nature of the business environment for the benefit of users.