Joint effects of variable carbon emission cost and multi-delay-in-payments under single-setup-multiple-delivery policy in a global sustainable supply chain

In today's global market, supply chain players have to cooperate mutually for extra benefits, long lasting paybacks, and to control carbon emission for a clean environment. This study develops the three-echelon sustainable supply chain model in the context of multi-level trade credit and single-setup-multiple-delivery policy for mutual coordination in financial support and reducing carbon emissions. These joint effects will benefit the firms for interim financing as well as minimize carbon emission for a clean environment. This model quantifies the effects of the environmental regulations and trade credit period under the single-setup-multiple-delivery policy. The supplier produces semi-finished items and transports it to the manufacturer, the manufacturer transform these semi-finished items into final products. These finished products finally transported to multi-retailer. The shipments are permitted to proceed from the particular lot during production instead after completing the entire lot This strategy save the environment by minimizing carbon emission. Additionally, a multi-level trade credit policy is considered in this model for short-term investment. An algebraic approach is used to derive a closed form optimal result for the designed model. This non-derivative method provides the effective solution algorithm. The main contribution of this study is to minimize the sustainable supply chain cost of the system by jointly considering the multi-level delay-in-payment, variable carbon emission cost, and variable transportation cost under the single-setup-multi-delivery policy. The study presents an optimal solution for the individual scenario and also derived a comparison between them with a numerical example. The findings directed that implementation of multi-level trade credit under single setup-multiple-delivery improves the economic and environmental performance of three-echelon supply chain. Sensitivity analysis of the developed study is also illustrated to prove the real practice.