Minimizing the trade-off between sustainability and cost effective performance by using autonomous vehicles

The activities of the most enterprises are related to the difficulties while adapting to the current market demand, therefore, it is vitally important to define and solve the arising problems. Today consumers require non-expensive, personalized, ecological products just on time to their doorstep. Most government policies in this area are focused on the customer rights, demand in sustainable products and on stemming the environmental impacts of unsustainable production practices. However, the authors' of the current scientific publications are discussing the limited possibilities to achieve the cost effective performance and sustainability. The conducted literature analysis indicates that there is a lack of industry 4.0 practices for supply chain management. The presented publication considers the competitiveness strategy, which contributes to sustainable and optimal costs management. The supply chain must evolve and shift from the traditional to more sustainable solutions. The Internet of Things, big data analytics, cloud computing, cyber-physical systems along with autonomous vehicles and logistic clusters can help to maintain the competitiveness advantage in the long-run. The proposed approach also provides flexibility, redundancy and adaptive abilities to manage the logistic cluster, which allows limit the trade-offs between sustainability and cost effective performance. The simulation of the logistic network was done using the real data from the specialists' interviews within the food industry. The obtained results showed that by implementing the autonomous vehicles strategy along with the consolidation warehouses CO2 emission level can be decreased by 22%. Moreover, the rest stops are not required during the trip because of the autonomous vehicles implementation in the supply chain. The proposed strategy also decreased costs of the whole logistic network. Currently the practical implementation of the developed distribution strategy is limited by the legislation and infrastructure issues, which should be solved aiming to reach sustainable supply chain and cost effective performance.