Designing Container Supply Chain by Optimizing Energy Consumption

Container supply chain (CSC) is a typical form of supply chain with the rapid development of container transportation and large-scale trades. Under the backgrounds of financial crisis and green supply chain, cost and time efficiency are not the singular objective of supply chain. How the industries can save the energy is a critical problem for the governments and enterprises. The container supply chain correlates with many companies in the chain. The design optimization of it contributes to the energy reduction. The CSC is simplified as a multi-epoch supply chain network. A model is built to choose the optimal chain between the suppliers and the consumer with minimal energy consumption. The simulation study shows the efficiency. The approach produces a significant result for global management of CSC for government and the industries.