Optimization of Inventory Routing Problem to Minimize Carbon Dioxide Emission

This study proposes a modification in the considered two-stage inventory routing problem (IRP) to minimize the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emission in the network by reducing the total distance travelled by all the vehicles to meet the demand.Multiple suppliers (S) and multiple production units (PU's) are representing the two-stages of the IRP network.Each PU demand is fulfilled directly (single stage transportation) from the suppliers using homogeneous vehicles.This approach gives a long travel distance for every vehicle during each trip.The CO 2 emission mainly depends on the distance travelled by the vehicle and vehicle characteristics.The proposed modification is the induction of Centralized collection and distribution centre (CCDC) between the suppliers and the PU's.It modifies the single stage transportation approach into a two-stage approach where CO 2 emission is reduced due to less travel distance which is claimed as novelty in this study.An evolutionary algorithm of an artificial immune system (AIS) is used for studying both the network models with numerical data and their results are compared.