Sustainable supply chains modeling

Background: Although existing studies have highlighted the importance of modeling sustainable supply chains, there is a scarcity of research that integrates environmental, social, and economic dimensions simultaneously. Accordingly, this paper aims to explore the possibilities of creating and modeling sustainable supply chains in the trefoil of economic, environmental, and social sustainability. Methods: For creating and modeling optimal sustainable supply chains, we used the mathematical method of dynamic programming. The method of dynamic programming was chosen for the reason that dynamic programming represents a set of special mathematical methods that serve to optimize multi-stage or multi-phase processes. Results: Minimum costs of the supply chain in the given example are achieved when the problem is solved from an economic perspective or from the perspective of total costs. Solving the problem from an ecological or social perspective increases the costs of the supply chain compared to optimal solutions, by 16.05% if the problem is solved from an ecological perspective and by 14.31% if the problem is solved from a social perspective. Conclusions: Contemporary sustainable supply chains are forced to include in their logistics network only those participants who can satisfy the principles of integral sustainability, i.e. respecting the economic, ecological and social dimensions.