Wheat Supply Chain Network Design: Lesson for Resilience and Sustainability in a Situation of War and Crisis

Global crises, such as the Russia–Ukraine war and the COVID-19 pandemic, have caused disruptions to the agri-food supply chains. Resilience strategies can be used to address these disruptions. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the design of a bi-objective resilient and sustainable wheat supply chain problem, considering disruptions caused by the Russia-Ukraine war. Resilience strategies for inventory prepositioning and backup suppliers were employed to deal with these disruptions. Also, a carbon cap-and-trade mechanism was used to reduce carbon emissions in the wheat supply chain. The Minimax Relative Regret Scenario-based Stochastic Programming (MRRSSP) and p-Robust Scenario-based Stochastic Programming (PRSSP) were simultaneously used to control the uncertainty stemming from these disruptions. Furthermore, we investigated the possibility of the simultaneous occurrence of multiple global crises and their impacts on demand parameters in the wheat supply chain. Sensitivity analysis revealed that in the case study, a simultaneous decrease in the foreign retailers’ demand and an increase in the domestic retailers’ demand resulted in the location and resilience strategy costs, accounting for more than 90% of the total costs. Moreover, using the Robust Scenario-based Stochastic Programming (RSSP) approach provided a 10% advantage over the nominal approach. If the RSSP is not employed, the cost due to lack of access to perfect information would be increased by 27%.