Sustainable Supply Chains to Save Our Planet Through Operations Research

This has not been a good day with President Trump announcing, as had been expected (but we were hoping otherwise), that the US is quitting the Paris Climate Pact. This puts US at odds with over 190 nations that had signed this pact. 

Frankly, I feel physically repulsed and ill by his decision, which is contrary to that of not only many world leaders but also top executives and even some of his very own advisors. I guess for some, breathing clean air and having their children breathe clean air, too; having clean water, and a diversity of species, and not dealing with more  turbulent weather, uncertainty, and possible food insecurity due to climate change, does not matter. This is so ironic, since the green economy can actually be a very successful economy and can generate jobs and is doing so (as the Chinese have even started to figure out). The costs of not slowing down climate change will be immense and are already upon us.

I do have some hope, however, in leaders from certain industries in the US as well as on the state levels (including California, New York, and Massachusetts) that progress will, nevertheless, be made to reduce pollution and emissions and to combat climate change.

In addition, I have hope because of students and this generation as well as a community of academics and practitioners that has a passion for sustainability and saving our planet.

Our most recent work on supply chains and sustainability, we will be presenting at the MSOM meeting this month. There we will present the paper,  A Competitive Multiperiod Supply Chain Network Model with Freight Carriers and Green Technology Investment Option, which was co-authored by Professors Sara Saberi and Joe Sarkis of WPI, Professor Jose M. Cruz of UConn, and me. In this work, we construct a model with multiple manufacturers, retailers, and freight carriers who maximize the net present value (NPV) of their investments in ecologically friendly technology. Future production, inventory, transaction, and transportation costs savings are used to help fund investments. The environmental impact of production, inventory, transportation, and consumption of products in the supply chain network are all integrated. The tradeoff between the initial technology investment and its ecological footprint effect are considered for the supply chain planning period. This is a large-scale multiperiod game theory problem for  a supply chain of multiple echelons, which we provide theoretical results for an extensive numerical results with policy implications.

We have also published on design of sustainable supply chains:  Design of Sustainable Supply Chains for Sustainable Cities, Anna Nagurney,   Environment & Planning B 42(1): (2015) pp 40-57 and Sustainable Supply Chain Network Design: A Multicriteria Perspective, Anna Nagurney and Ladimer S. Nagurney, International Journal of Sustainable Engineering 3: (2010) pp 189-197.

Also, topics related to transportation have been a theme in our sustainability research:   Environmental Impact Assessment of Transportation Networks with Degradable Links in an Era of Climate Change, Anna Nagurney, Qiang Qiang, and Ladimer Nagurney, International Journal of Sustainable Transportation 4: (2010) pp 154-171 and  Environmental and Cost Synergy in Supply Chain Network Integration in Mergers and Acquisitions, Anna Nagurney and Trisha Woolley, in Sustainable Energy and Transportation Systems, Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Multiple Criteria Decision Making, Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, M. Ehrgott, B. Naujoks, T. Stewart, and J. Wallenius, Editors, Springer, Berlin, Germany (2010) pp 51-78.

Electronic recycling has also been a theme of several papers of ours, including:   When and for Whom would E-waste be a Treasure Trove? Insights from a Network Equilibrium Model of W-waste Flows, Tina Wakolbinger, Fuminori Toyasaki, Thomas Nowak, and Anna Nagurney, International Journal of Production Economics 154: (2014) pp 263–273.

Food, given the costs associated with waste, has obsessed us in our research, with an example being:  Competitive Food Supply Chain Networks with Application to Fresh Produce, Min Yu and Anna Nagurney, European Journal of Operational Research 224(2): (2013) pp 273-282.

Other sustainable supply chain research of ours has included work on fashion supply chains: Fashion Supply Chain Network Competition with Ecolabelling, Anna Nagurney, Min Yu, and Jonas Floden, in Sustainable Fashion Supply Chain Management: From Sourcing to Retailing, T.-M. Choi and T.C.E. Cheng, Editors, Springer (2015) pp 61-84 and Sustainable Fashion Supply Chain Management Under Oligopolistic Competition and Brand Differentiation, Anna Nagurney and Min Yu, International Journal of Production Economics, Special Section on Green Manufacturing and Distribution in the Fashion and Apparel Industries 135: (2012) pp 532-540.

Finally, in addition to several books that I have written on sustainability, with examples highlighted here,  we have also written on sustainability issues in healthcare in the papers: 
Securing the Sustainability of Global Medical Nuclear Supply Chains Through Economic Cost Recovery, Risk Management, and Optimization, Anna Nagurney, Ladimer S. Nagurney, and Dong Li, International Journal of Sustainable Transportation 9(6): (2015) pp 405-418 and Supply Chain Network Design of a Sustainable Blood Banking System, Anna Nagurney and Amir H. Masoumi, in Sustainable Supply Chains: Models, Methods and Public Policy Implications, T. Boone, V. Jayaraman, and R. Ganeshan, Editors, Springer, London, England (2012) pp 49-72.

We have also published on policies and energy and the environment with an example of that research being:  Spatially Differentiated Trade of Permits for Multipollutant Electric Power Supply Chains, Trisha Woolley, Anna Nagurney, and John Stranlund, in Optimization in the Energy Industry, J. Kallrath, P. Pardalos, S. Rebennack, and M. Scheidt, Editors, Springer, Berlin, Germany (2009) pp 277-296.

Sustainability of our supply chains has never been more essential.

A Great Week for Our Research on Networks

Last week was the first week of the new academic semester at UMass Amherst and it was a very exciting one.

I always very much enjoy meeting new students in the courses that I am teaching.

Plus, it was a great week for news on our research on Networks.

One of the best things about collaborations, besides the synergy and dynamism of researching tough problems together, is that, when one gets good news, such as a paper getting accepted, or hearing of its publication, and/or some great publicity about the work, you can share it and celebrate together - even if it is across the miles!

This week, Luis Marentes, who was a visiting doctoral student in the College of Engineering at UMass Amherst last year, and who is from Colombia, Professor Tilman Wolf (who was his host), and with whom I have a large NSF grant, and Professors Yezid Donoso and Harold Castro of the  Department of Systems and Computing Engineering, Universidad de los Andes in  Bogota, Colombia, and I had our paper, "Overcoming Economic Challenges of Internet Operators in Low Income Regions through a Delay Tolerant Architecture with Mechanic Backhauls," appear online in the journal Netnomics.  It was great to share in the happiness of all those involved in this publication, which is on the dynamic pricing of Delay Tolerant Networks, and proposes a new computer architecture. To-date, there has been minimal work on the pricing in this domain and the identification of the potential profitability of Internet Service Providers in poor, and, often, rural communities, where even mechanic (even in the form of mule transportation) may be used to transport Internet information.

Also, our paper, "Securing the Sustainability of Global Medical Nuclear Supply Chains Through Economic Cost Recovery, Risk Management, and Optimization," co-authored with Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney of the University of Hartford and my doctoral student, Dong "Michelle" Li, appeared this week in the special issue of the International Journal of Sustainable Transportation devoted to Sustainability in Transportation Networks.  The paper was accepted for publication close to 3 years ago so it was nice to see it officially in the journal volume!

The first paper above has 5 co-authors, the second one has 3, and the one below only one (but ensuing ones on cybersecurity will have co-authors).  Specifically, the paper, "A Multiproduct Network Economic Model of Cybercrime in Financial Services,  that I wrote after our very successful Advanced Cyber Security Workshop at the MIT Sloan School last Fall, received very nice reviews from an INFORMS journal, and it has been revised and resubmitted. In the Acknowledgments I also thank the audience who came to my presentation at the Boston INFORMS Analytics conference in Spring 2014, which was a fabulous conference!


Another highlight this past week was having our NSF project: Network Innovation Through Choice, which we are calling ChoiceNet, and for which Professor Wolf and I are PI and Co-PI (along with 5 other Co-PIs from the University of Kentucky, NCState, and the Renaissance Institute (RENCI) at UNC) being featured on the UMass Amherst Research website in Research Next.  And the article, Internext, UMass Amherst experts are driving the future of Internet infrastructure, will appear in the 2014 UMass Amherst Annual Report on Research which will be available, I am told, by the end of this month. 


This should be a very exciting week as well with many interview candidates coming both to the Isenberg School and to UMass and with a major snowstorm forecast for early this week!

Our Legislators' Vision Good for Healthcare and National Security

The below blogpost was written with Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney, Professor of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering, University of Hartford, CT.

Several years ago, we became interested in the Supply Chain of the Medical Nuclear Isotope Molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) that decays into Technetium-99m (Tc-99m), which is used for countless medical tests, especially for cardiac symptoms and cancer diagnostics. At that time, no US reactor was generating Mo-99. As a result, this critical radioisotope that is used in over 50,000 procedures per day in the US with over 1000 procedures per year at Cooley Dickinson Hospital (our local hospital in Northampton, MA) had to be imported from reactors in Canada, Western Europe, and the former Eastern Bloc countries. In addition to the potential security problems caused by reliance on foreign sources, most of the isotope was generated in reactors using Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) fuel, which could, if not properly secured, be diverted to nuclear weapons.

Concern about the security of the supply of this radioisotope from medical professionals, scientists, and nuclear security experts led the House of Representatives in the 111^th Congress to pass the American Medical Isotope Production Act, sponsored by Representative (now Senator) Ed Markey (D-MA) and co-sponsored by Representative James McGovern (D-MA), whose district, after the 2010 census, now includes Amherst and Northampton.

Just over two years later, the results of these efforts are closer to being realized. Their legislative initiatives were fulfilled with the passage of Public Law 112-239 in January 2013, which includes Subtitle F —American Medical Isotopes Production as part of the Department of Energy National Security Programs.

In September 2013, NorthStar Medical Technologies, of Madison, Wisconsin, a manufacturer and distributor of domestically-produced radioisotopes for the nuclear medicine industry, was able to raise $13.5 million from private investors to begin production of Mo-99 at the Missouri University Research Reactor. According to a recent article in Physics Today, production will begin, following FDA approval, in mid 2014 and, by late 2015, Northstar should be able to produce 3000 six-day curies of Mo-99 per week, approximately half of the US demand for this critical radioisotope.

In November 2013, NorthStar was awarded a $21.8 million cooperative agreement that included $10.9 millionfrom the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Nuclear SecurityAdministration (NNSA) as part of its Global Threat ReductionInitiative. Currently, a large portion of Mo-99 is produced in reactors using Highly Enriched Uranium, HEU. The Global Threat Reduction Initiative aims to accelerate the development of a reliable, domestic supply of Mo-99 while reducing the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in civilian applications worldwide. NorthStar plans to develop non-uranium-based production of Mo-99 via neutron capture.

This funding will reduce potential supply shortages, address national security concerns associated with the use of HEU for civilian applications and reliance on foreign sources, and simplify the logistical complexities of the shipping and disposal of a highly radioactive isotope with long life byproducts. We discussed these issues in our book, Networks Against Time: Supply Chain Analytics for Perishable Products, co-authored with then UMass Isenberg School of Management doctoral students Min Yu and Amir Masoumi, and published in 2013.

As we look forward to the production of Mo-99 in Missouri and Northstar's new technology, we see the efforts of many scientists, engineers, medical professionals, public policy makers, and our outstanding elected officials bearing fruit (or Mo-99/TC99m, as it be). 

Our OpED of a few years ago, emphasized the severity of this issue.

Very glad to see such great progress made, thanks to our legislators in Massachusetts!