Combined effects of carbon emission and production quality improvement for fixed lifetime products in a sustainable supply chain management

Cleaning of waste in a production system under a sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) is the main issue for many industries. For this reason, the combined effects of improved quality of products and controlling carbon emission are very essential for any sustainable supply chain management. Business managers control the production process in order to reduce total sustainable supply chain cost and they also consider the best transaction policy for delivering finished products to other parties. In this manuscript, a three-echelon sustainable supply chain model with a single-supplier, single-manufacture, and multiple retailers is considered. A discrete setup cost reduction for the supplier makes the model more realistic. The party (manufacturer) estimates the defective cost, as the received products from the supplier are not always perfect. The main task for the manufacturer is to reduce defective products and control the carbon emission to maintain the sustainability. The retailer maintains the exact order as on demand to the manufacturer to save from the excess holding costs. The model has been solved with a specific algebraic procedure to obtain the global optimum solution. Some numerical experiments are conducted to ensure the effectiveness of the model and reduction of cost. A sensitivity analysis and graphical representation are specified for the effectiveness of this study. Numerical experiments find that the model obtains the global optimum solution at the optimum values of the decision variables and the reduction of carbon emission has been proved. The quality of the product can be improved by the recommended strategies. •Reduction of waste is considered within a production system.•A sustainable supply chain is considered with improved quality.•Production setup cost is reduced by a discrete investment.