Design and optimization of a waste management model in the sustainable supply chain in mining

Since its emergence, Mining industries have played a rather significant role in every dimension of human and economic development. The industry’s expansion can act as a key factor in the development of any given country. While such developments can bring numerous advantages, it has negative impacts on the surrounding environment and attempts in minimizing any negative environmental outcome have been made. Supply chain embodies all activities related to the flow and conversion of goods and moreover, flow of information from the stage of minerals’ extraction to the delivery of goods to consumers. This thesis, which employs a multi-objective optimization design for optimizing waste management in sustainable supply chain case study in ballast stone mine, has three objectives. The first objective is to minimize the cost of installation and transportation, thereby achieving economic process refinements. The second objective is minimizing the production of Co2 gas through transportation and production process, hence reducing environmental complications and the third objective is achieving technological improvements by reducing the product quality deviation. The aforementioned model is solved using the GAMZ software by LP metric method. The results show the overall cost of the ballast stone and waste, concerning fixed costs and transportation costs in sending them to the customers on request, the amount of CO2 emissions, and the extent of total deviations of quality goals for each parameter between the extracted mineral and the products delivered to the customers.