Physical Internet Supply Chain: Short Literature Review and Research Perspective on Strategic and Operational Levels.

Various technologies have been introduced recently to enhance the performance and sustainability of the global supply chain network. Physical Internet is one of the most studied paradigms that considers the whole supply chain instead of focusing only on the production sites and assembly lines of Industry 4.0 with Cyber Physical Systems. The Physical Internet is designed to improve the sustainability economically, socially and environmentally. Most of the reviewed papers focus on economic objectives. Sustainability in its social and environmental form is ignored in the literature, except for a few works that consider energy consumption and CO2 emissions. In this paper, we present a short literature review on the applications and role of the Physical Internet in the improvement of the logistics global performance as well as its sustainability. The assignment problem is highlighted at both strategic and operational levels. At a strategic level, the Physical Internet (PI) network considered in this work is a multi-plant, multi-product supply chain. At operational level, the PI-hub is studied. The results of the analysis are discussed, and future research directions are proposed.