Annals of Operations Research

, Volume 250, Issue 2, pp 309–340 | Cite as

Sustainable transport fleet appraisal using a hybrid multi-objective decision making approach

S.I.: Sustainable supply chain design and Mgt.
First Online:

Abstract

One of the most critical operational practices influencing the environmental sustainability of organizations and their supply chains is the transport of materials, products and people. The carbon footprints, materials depletion, and general pollution emissions from transport vehicles makes their environmental burdens significant. Thus, identifying, selecting and implementing more environmentally conscious transportation vehicles can be of paramount importance for the development and management of greener supply chains. Given the relative importance of this issue, it is surprising that research on transport fleet evaluation, especially from an environmental sustainability perspective, has been rather limited. A primary challenge in this context is the broad range of influencing factors that need to be considered, many of which are not fully and easily measurable. This paper aims to (1) develop a holistic framework for sustainable transport fleet appraisal incorporating various vehicle performance, economic and environmental criteria, (2) introduce a novel hybrid approach for sustainable transportation vehicle evaluation and selection by combining a three-parameter interval grey number with a rough set theory and VIKOR method, (3) investigate the application of the proposed approach in a case example where empirical data is collected from industry experts, (4) evaluate the robustness of the methodology through sensitivity analysis experiments, and (5) provide practical insights and directions for future research in this area.

Keywords

Transport fleet evaluation Transportation vehicle Environmental sustainability Grey numbers Rough set theory VIKOR 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China Project (71102090, 71472031), Liaoning Excellent Talents in University (WJQ2014029).

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.School of Management Science and EngineeringDongbei University of Finance and EconomicsDalianChina
  2. 2.Institute of Transport and Logistics StudiesThe University of Sydney Business SchoolSydneyAustralia
  3. 3.Foisie School of BusinessWorcester Polytechnic InstituteWorcesterUSA

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