4 Presentations

• 
  10:30 AM - 10:55 AM

  Sustainable Supplier Selection: Systematic Approach Using Data Envelopment Analysis In the Post-Pandemic Era

  • Mazyar Zahedi-Seresht, presenter,
  • Wing Ki Lee, University Canada West
  • Ganisha Nayanathara Premarathna Athaudage, University Canada West

  With the existence of COVID-19, the whole economy experienced an unprecedented challenge. To avoid being out of the fierce competition, an organization must be resilient to the ever-changing and unanticipated market. In an era of information explosion, managers require a systematic, explicable, comparative, and traceable approach to evaluate and choose suppliers. In recent years, procurement strategies have been revamped due to the disruption in the global supply chain by the pandemic and war in Europe. A wrong supplier selection decision seriously damages the company’s supply chain, operations, and reputation. Therefore, partnering with a sustainable supplier is a prerequisite for business success. With the rising importance of sustainability, choosing a competent supplier is one of the major strategic management decisions. A sustainable supplier impacts business operations and accelerates long-term growth, enhancing efficiency and effectiveness. In the post-pandemic era, it is expected to have new approaches to define inputs and outputs to rank suppliers and logistics firms. We are using Data Envelopment Analysis to identify a sustainable supplier. Our approach involves developing a new method for selecting inputs and outputs, which we believe will improve the accuracy and relevance of our analysis to find sustainable suppliers.
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  10:55 AM - 11:20 AM

  A network optimization model for water treatment and distribution network

  • Franklin Djeumou Fomeni, presenter, Universite du Quebec a Montreal
  • Montaz Ali, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

  Water treatment and distribution is one of the most energy consuming processes of all in the world. Thus optimizing energy in water distribution is a priority for water distribution networks managers. One of the most energy consuming component of the water treatment distribution system is the operation of the pumps between the water sources and the storage tanks and or between the tanks.
  The management of the tanks of the network is done based on the assignment of three level set-points for each one of the three different time slots. These set-points define the level at which the water pumps that supply water to the tank have to be switched on or off. However, operating the pumps during peak energy demand periods of the day in order to meet the water demand, may yield extremely high operational cost. We present a network optimization model that can be used reduce the operational cost of a water network distribution, while still being able to meet the population demand for water as well as accounting for the physicalities of the water treatment and distribution network. A case study of one of the largest European cities is presented.
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  11:20 AM - 11:45 AM

  Green product development in light of government subsidies

  • Hossein Zolfagharinia, presenter, Toronto Metropolitan University
  • Maryam Zangiabadi, Toronto Metropolitan University
  • Maryam Hafezi, Sheridan College

  This study explores the implications of government subsidies on the decisions of a monopolist firm when considering the design of environmentally friendly products. A two-stage Stackelberg game is used to analyze the firm's reaction to the subsidies, and a mathematical formulation is adopted to model the impact of the subsidy on the firm's choice between mass marketing and market segmentation. The obtained results reveal that the subsidy level does not affect the relationships between the environmental qualities of the manufactured products under different marketing strategies when the green market is not strong. Additionally, our analyses provide insights into how the optimal subsidy should be selected to maximize social welfare and how this optimal subsidy is impacted by various parameters, such as the cost of research and development.
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  11:45 AM - 12:10 PM

  Logistics in Remote Areas and Food Insecurity: A Systematic Literature Review

  • Alexandra Levesque, presenter, UQAM

  Remote logistics is a field of study that is not yet fully covered by the academic literature. This topic is slowly starting to emerge in fields of application like humanitarian and healthcare logistics, but without covering specific challenges of food security. Food insecurity in remote regions is significantly higher than in the rest of Canada and that is partially due to the isolation, long ditance to travel and lack of infrastructures. This study is the first attempt at linking the topics of logistics activities (OR/MS applications) to food security factors. Through a systematic literature review on remote logisitcs, more than 3000 papers were analyzed and classified. This research is a compilation of published literautre on the topic and summarizes the critical findings as well as propose general applications that could be transposed to a context like Northern Canada in terms of diminishing food insecurity by improving network design or distribution network structure.