A Sustainable Electric Vehicle Smart Production with Work-in-process Inventory of Outsourced Spare Parts

Electric vehicle production has recently gained popularity due to increasing emissions. The research on electric vehicle production concerning technical, economic, and environmental aspects is very less compared to the traditional vehicle. This research studies a mixed-type electric vehicle production system that produces spare parts and finally assembles all spare parts for the vehicle. The spare parts production combines in-line production with returnable items and outsourcing. An automated inspection for both spare parts and vehicles is included within the system. Two different types of machines work for the production process: Machine 1 for spare parts and Machine 2 for vehicles. As the basic purpose is to provide an ecofriendly logistics facility, the manufacturing company takes care of carbon emissions from the system, customer satisfaction, and the green quality of vehicles. Necessary and sufficient conditions of classical optimization find global optimum solutions. Results show that green technology and customer satisfaction are two important factors for vehicle production. Comparative discussions, sensitivity, and robust analysis are provided to validate the theoretical contributions. The proposed mixed-type production model earns 85.32% more profit than a traditional production model. The electric vehicle provides a 96% customer satisfaction with an increase of 68.97% profit without customer satisfaction.