Design and planning for green global supply chains under periodic review replenishment policies

We quantify the impact of jointly optimizing strategic network design and tactical inventory planning on the cost and CO2 emissions of multi-echelon logistics networks. The obtained insights indicate that longer optimized replenishment cycles reduce a node’s transportation cost and CO2 emissions but increase its inventory costs. Moreover, under a fixed replenishment cycle, a node’s service level increases when supplied by a satellite warehouse. Finally: (i) the costs of implementing optimal green network design decisions could be misleading if inventory planning is neglected, (ii) greening of supply chains could become expensive, (iii) current legislative CO2 ton prices hardly influence logistics networks.