Green and Sustainable Logistics and Supply Chain Management

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainability is becoming a pressing current need, as it is necessary to maintain economic prosperity as well as preserve the people and planet. The focal mindset of profit has already increased the CO₂ levels in the environment to severe extent. The alarming amount of CO₂ emissions has forced the world leaders to pledge to slash CO₂ emissions via policy frameworks targeting sustainable development (Islam and Gajpal 2021). Given these institutional shifts, businesses must rethink their approach and planning to balance environmental, economic, and social outcomes. Therefore, the emphasis on sustainability in supply chain management, logistics, and transportation has gained momentum in recent years (Seuring and Müller 2008). This paradigm is propelling researchers to consider green and social aspects in their research models, which originally sought to maximize profits (Bhardwaj et al. 2020, Zhang et al. 2020, Zhang et al. 2018 ).

In this Special Issue, our aim is to explore the applications of sustainability in supply chain management, operation management, logistics, transportation, vehicle routing models, health care management, and fuzzy sets theory. We invite researchers from various management fields to consider original and high-quality research papers that mainly report on green and sustainability management issues could fulfil the aims of this Special Issue. Manuscripts in this Special Issue will focus on both theoretical and empirical studies. Papers may include literature reviews, conceptual theory development, optimization models, and qualitative survey research, such as case studies and quantitative empirical methods (Seuring 2013, Roy et al. 2018, Roy 2019). The main topics are green supply chain management, social supply chains, and sustainable supply chain management. A focus on closed-loop supply chains is welcomed (Neto et al. 2010). Other topics may cover issues related to the challenges presented by COVID-19 and their impact on sustainability outcomes (Gajpal et al. 2022). In this line, papers based on primary or secondary data related to sustainability in light of disruptions in the healthcare industry are also welcomed (Dobrzykowski 2019). These anchoring will enable us, as academics and practitioners, to generate meaningful sustainability frameworks for future research. Submitted papers must comply with the journal guidelines.

Topics include but are not limited to:

• Transportation and logistics problems in sustainable development;
• The application of DEA and efficiency measures in sustainability management;
• Green vehicle routing problems;
• Green applications in operations research;
• Sustainability in supply chain management and operations management;
• Sustainable logistics and vehicle routing problems in supply chain management;
• Heuristics optimization methods in sustainable supply chain networks;
• Lean and agile management in sustainability;
• Ethics in supply chain management;
• Big data and predictive analytics with social and environmental considerations;
• Supply chain optimization models using sustainable practices;
• Environmentally sustainable supply chain management and practices;
• Supplier selection models in the sustainable environment;
• Sustainable practices in health care management;
• Application of MCDM methods in sustainable engineering;
•  Risk management for sustainable supply chain management;
• Sustainable humanitarian supply chain management;
• Fuzzy sets theory and applications in sustainable supply chain management;
• Fuzzy, grey, rough, and neutrosophic theory considering sustainability issues.

We are looking forward to your contributions.

References:

Bhardwaj, A. K., Garg, A., Ram, S., Gajpal, Y., & Zheng, C. (2020). Research trends in green product for environment: A bibliometric perspective. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(22), 8469.

Dobrzykowski, D., 2019. Understanding the downstream healthcare supply chain: Unpacking regulatory and industry characteristics. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 55 (2), 26–46.

Gajpal, Y., Appadoo, S. S., Shi, V., & Hu, G. (2022). Optimal multi-stage group partition for efficient coronavirus screening. Annals of Operations Research, 1-17.

Islam, M. A., & Gajpal, Y. (2021). Optimization of conventional and green vehicles composition under carbon emission cap. Sustainability, 13(12), 6940.

Neto, J.Q.F., Walther, G., Bloemhof, J., Nunen, J.A.E.E. van, and Spengler, T., 2010. From closed-loop to sustainable supply chains: the WEEE case. International Journal of Production Research, 48 (15), 4463–4481.

Roy, V., 2019. Decoding the elemental arcs of superior performance in sustainable supply chains. Management Decision, 57 (9), 2570–2592.

Roy, V., Schoenherr, T., and Charan, P., 2018. The thematic landscape of literature in sustainable supply chain management (SSCM). International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 38 (4), 1091–1124.

Seuring, S., 2013. A review of modeling approaches for sustainable supply chain management. Decision Support Systems, 54 (4), 1513–1520.

Seuring, S. and Müller, M., 2008. From a literature review to a conceptual framework for sustainable supply chain management. Journal of Cleaner Production, 16 (15), 1699–1710.

 Zhang, W., Gajpal, Y., Appadoo, S. S., & Wei, Q. (2020). Multi-depot green vehicle routing problem to minimize carbon emissions. Sustainability, 12(8), 3500.

Zhang, S., Gajpal, Y., & Appadoo, S. S. (2018). A meta-heuristic for capacitated green vehicle routing problem. Annals of Operations Research, 269(1), 753-771.

Dr. Yuvraj Gajpal
Dr. Vivek Roy
Dr. Prasenjit Chaterjee
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• sustainable supply chain management
• sustainable transportation and logistics
• sustainable management
• carbon emissions
• global warming
• greenhouse gas emissions