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An importer in Hong Kong employs vehicles, all from external transport companies, to deliver products to its customers geographically scattered in different locations. The delivery plan needs to simultaneously minimize the total traveling cost and balance the profits among all transport companies. This transportation practice engenders a new variant of vehicle routing problems, called the vehicle routing problem with outsourcing and profit balancing (VRPOPB). The profits are balanced by maximizing the minimum unit profit of all transport companies, which can effectively avoid the occurrence of distorted solutions. We develop two multi-objective local search (MOLS) algorithms for the problem, where the second one enhances the first one by incorporating several additional techniques. To evaluate our algorithms, we conduct extensive experiments on 57 generated instances and a real case obtained from a food importer in Hong Kong. The computational results clearly demonstrate that our enhanced MOLS algorithm is able to achieve satisfactory solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using relatively simple and widely used models, we illustrate how carbon emission concerns could be integrated into operational decision-making with regard to procurement, production, and inventory management. We show how, by associating carbon emission parameters with various decision variables, traditional models can be modified to support decision-making that accounts for both cost and carbon footprint. We examine how the values of these parameters as well as the parameters of regulatory emission control policies affect cost and emissions. We use the models to study the extent to which carbon reduction requirements can be addressed by operational adjustments, as an alternative (or a supplement) to costly investments in carbon-reducing technologies. We also use the models to investigate the impact of collaboration among firms within the same supply chain on their costs and carbon emissions and study the incentives firms might have in seeking such cooperation. We provide a series of insights that highlight the impact of operational decisions on carbon emissions and the importance of operational models in evaluating the impact of different regulatory policies and in assessing the benefits of investments in more carbon efficient technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]