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This study integrates economic, environmental, and social dimensions into the distribution network for India’s Public Distribution System (PDS). It aims to identify multi-modal strategies that balance cost efficiency, lower emissions, and community well-being.

A model is proposed to allocate grains from base to field silos via road, rail, and inland waterways considering Triple Bottom Line (TBL). The costs, emissions, and social factors (e.g. employment) were quantified and combined to generate a composite score, enabling rigorous trade-off evaluation.

Results from a representative case study show that integrating rail and waterways reduces total costs and emissions while boosting employment and community welfare. Intermodal configurations improve the PDS’s sustainability, demonstrating the feasibility of aligning economic objectives with environmental and social outcomes.

Future work could incorporate stochastic demand or disruptions, and extend beyond a single commodity or region, enhancing the model’s robustness and generalizability.

Insights guide planners in selecting routes, modes, and facility investments aligned with cost reduction, emissions control, and social uplift.

The approach promotes inclusive development by increasing employment opportunities and ensuring a more equitable distribution of benefits in vulnerable communities.

This research extends conventional cost-centric frameworks by incorporating TBL metrics in a large-scale, government-run distribution setting. It provides a practical blueprint, informing infrastructural investments and policy interventions for holistic, enduring improvements in food security and resource utilization.

Co-creation and co-invention are two diverse spheres in modern-day supply chains. Despite literature suggesting the existence of similar coherence between these concepts, the availability of published theory favoring these ideal lacks justification. This research aims to investigate the correlation and convergence of these well-known concepts to support a combined impact on research.

Comprehensive review of published literature using mathematical and statistical tools to measure inherent interrelationships and publication impacts in literature handling co-creation and co-invention.

An exploratory quantitative and qualitative analysis reveals the conundrums existing in distribution, keyword and adoption of research in the global and scientific community. The research favors a positive correlation existing between concepts such as co-ordination, collaboration, open-innovation, value creation with supply chain management and its development with rising importance of big data and block-chain technologies. Analysis reveals knowledge development with increased user-based interaction, better utilization of resources and enhanced productivity to support the mutual adaptation of co-creation and co-invention.

Outcomes will be a beacon for researchers to develop models and frameworks. Results derived will aid in improving customer participation, enhance decision making in product development, augment value creation and knowledge and resource sharing leading toward innovation.

Results will provide a detailed outline of the development and implementation of concepts in both developed and developing countries. Outcomes will also serve as a framework for marketing heads, graphic designers, website designers, supplier management and customer management in the service industry, production supervisors and customer management personnel in manufacturing industries.