Planning of cement plants for environmentally friendly production: a fuzzy-weighted stochastic multi-objective model

This study focuses on locating and planning cement plants for environmentally friendly cement production and distribution by achieving environment-oriented and economic objectives. This study introduces a new stochastic goal-programming model with fuzzy-weighted goals. Dust and gaseous emissions are inevitable despite improvements in the chemistry, technology, and process of cement production. A triangular fuzzy pairwise comparison based on expert knowledge indicated that distance between cement plants and residential areas has higher importance than other considered goals. The model was demonstrated by applying it to a real dataset and solved using the branch and bound method. As planning, four optimal plant sites were identified to accept the raw materials of three mines and supply nine demands. The mathematical model can be easily updated and applied in all cases where cement plants are planned to locate the plants, assign raw materials to the plants, and assign cement from the plants to demands.