A study of a robust multi-objective supplier-material selection problem

Abstract

This paper develops a multi-objective mathematical formulation for supplier-material selection in cardboard box manufacturing. The aim is to minimize three different scaled objectives: wastage of raw material, raw material cost and product surplus. To model industry reality more closely, the formulation is extended to an environment that includes uncertain costs and demands. In this sense, the model is reformulated as a robust optimization problem. To solve this problem, a weighted global criterion approach is developed and applied to find Pareto optimal solutions. A case study from a cardboard box manufacturer is used to test the efficiency of the proposed robust formulation and the proposed solution approach. The sensitivity of the Pareto optimal solutions to different levels of uncertainty in the parameters and different weights of the objective functions is also studied.