Optimizing waste collection in an organized industrial region: a case study

Abstract

In this paper we present a case study which involves the design of a supply chain network for industrial waste collection. The problem is to transport metal waste from 17 factories to containers and from containers to a disposal center (DC) at an organized region of automobile parts suppliers. We applied the classic mixed-integer programming (MIP) model for the two-stage supply chain to the solution of this problem. The visualization of the optimal solution provided us with several interesting insights that would not be easily derived otherwise.