Robust design of a green-responsive closed-loop supply chain network for the ventilator device

Antifragile, sustainable, and agile supply chain network design by considering resiliency, robustness, risk, and environmental requirements

This research suggests an Antifragile, Sustainable and Agile Supply Chain Network Design (ASASCND) as a new network design that integrates these concepts considering resiliency, robustness, risk, and environmental requirements. The cost function combines a novel method with robust stochastic optimization and Entropic Value at Risk (EVaR). This model combines expected value, maximum and EVaR of cost as an objective function. This research adds antifragility by the effect of learning on variable parameters, sustainability by considering the environmental and social issues, resiliency and agility by flexible capacity, and multi-resource and demand satisfaction constraints to the model. The case study is in the automotive industry. This model compares the main problem by considering antifragility without thinking about antifragility. The ASASCND cost is - 0.3% less than without considering antifragility. In addition, when the conservatism coefficient grows, the cost function increase. In addition, the antifragility coefficient and the confidence level affect positively, and the agility coefficient negatively affects the cost function. Expanding the model scale changes the cost function and time computation because the antifragility coefficient changes variable cost. Finally, managerial insights and practical implications are explained.

Robust design of a logistics system using FePIA procedure and analysis of trade-offs between CO2 emissions and net present value

The problems of flexible planning of the design of logistics systems for the collection of food products such as raw milk can result in a decrease in the performance of critical indicators for their performance. This paper proposes a new efficient methodology for robustly designing a first-mile logistics system for storing and refrigerating milk as a perishable product considering decisions related to open facilities and the flow of products, including sustainability indices. The proposed approach is modeled as a bi-objective problem by considering the minimization of greenhouse gas emissions (CO2) produced by milk transportation canteens and the maximization of the system configuration's net present value (NPV). We have analyzed and determined the most robust configuration for the first time and explained the robustness-NPV and robustness-CO2 relationships. The proposed mathematical model is solved by the Epsilon constraints method, and the robustness is calculated considering an extension of the FePIA methodology for multiobjective problems. A novel contribution is a balance in the possible future values generated by the company related to its cash flows and the generation of CO2 emissions when using a motorized transport frequently used in the shipment of raw milk considering a new important aspect such as the volume of product transported and the slope of the path between the production farm and the storage cooling tanks.

Circular Economy Research in the COVID-19 Era: a Review and the Road Ahead

The onset of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in a major crisis that has severely impacted numerous economic, environmental, and social aspects of human life. During the pandemic, the potential of the circular economy (CE) has gained increasing attention as a prospective remedy for numerous sustainability problems. This systematic literature review charts CE research in the COVID-19 era. To this end, 160 journal articles were selected from the Scopus database. The performance indicators of the literature were determined and described through a bibliometric analysis. Moreover, the conceptual structure of CE research was identified via a keyword co-occurrence network. Based on bibliographic coupling, the focus of CE research in the COVID-19 era revolves mainly around five thematic areas, including: (1) waste management; (2) digitalization and sustainable supply chain management; (3) the impact of COVID-19 on food systems; (4) sustainable development goals, smart cities, and bioeconomy; and (5) closed-loop supply chains. Overall, this review contributes to enriching the literature by determining the main thematic areas and future research directions that can help to advance the transition to the CE and reduce the impact of COVID-19 and similar disasters in the future.

Leagile and sustainable supplier selection problem in the Industry 4.0 era: a case study of the medical devices using hybrid multi-criteria decision making tool

Given the crucial role of the supplier selection problem (SSP) in today's competitive business environment, the present study investigates the SSP by considering the leagile, sustainability, and Industry 4.0 (I4.0) indicators for the medical devices industry (MDI). In this regard, at the outset, the list of criteria and sub-criteria is provided based on the literature and experts' opinions. Then, the importance of the indicators is measured utilizing the rough best-worst method (RBWM). In the next step, the potential suppliers are ranked employing the multi-attributive border approximation area comparison (IR-MABAC) method. Due to the crucial role of medical devices during the COVID-19 outbreak, the present work selects a project-based organization in this industry as a case study. The obtained results show that agility and sustainability are the most important criteria, and manufacturing flexibility, cost, reliability, smart factory, and quality are the most important sub-criteria. The main theoretical contributions of this study are considering the leagile, sustainability, and I4.0 criteria in the SSP and employing the hybrid RBWM-IR-MABAC method in this area for the first time. On the other side, The results of this research can help supply chain managers to become more familiar with the sustainability, agility, leanness, and I4.0 criteria in the business environment.

A hybrid model for robust design of sustainable closed-loop supply chain in lead-acid battery industry

Considering supply chain efficiency during the network design process significantly affect chain performance improvement. In this paper, the design process of a sustainable lead-acid battery supply chain network was addressed. Because the design of such networks always involves great computational complexity, in the present study, a two-stage model was proposed to overcome this issue. In the first stage, candidate sites of recycling centers were identified using data envelopment analysis (DEA) and based on their efficiency scores. Unlike the previous studies, not only economic criteria but also technical and geographical criteria were employed to select these locations. In the second stage, a bi-objective programming model was developed to simultaneously determine the tactical and strategic decisions of the chain. Since some data was subject to uncertainty, a robust possibilistic approach was presented. The model ensures that the resulting structure for the chain will be robust to noise and disturbance in parameters. A life cycle assessment model based on the ReCiPe 2008 method was developed in SimaPro software. To evaluate the applicability of the presented method, a case study in the automotive industry was used. The results of implementing the DEA method showed that from among 23 available locations, 11 potential places were selected for construct recycling centers. The final results showed that the inappropriate potential locations of recycling centers were eliminated, and the complexity of the mathematical model proposed in the second stage was reduced. The obtained results of environmental protection costs revealed that this criterion changed from 0 to 8,333,874,332. Moreover, the first objective function resulted in a centralized network to minimize costs, and in contrast, the second objective function tended to decentralize the network to minimize environmental impacts.

A heuristic-based hybrid algorithm to configure a sustainable supply chain network for medical devices considering information-sharing systems

In today's hyper-competitive marketplace, the crucial role of the sustainability concept has been highlighted more. Hence, managers' attention has been attracted to the concept of sustainable supply chains. On the other hand, after the COVID-19 outbreak, the importance of medical devices and their demand has drastically enhanced, which has led to shifting the attention of researchers toward this industry. In this regard, based on the importance of the mentioned points, the current study configures a sustainable supply chain network for the medical devices industry. In this way, given the crucial role of the oxygen concentrator during the COVID-19 outbreak, the present study investigates the supply chain of the mentioned goods as a case study. Also, this research develops an efficient hybrid solution method based on goal programming, a heuristic algorithm, and the simulated annealing algorithm to solve the suggested model. Eventually, sensitivity analysis is conducted to examine the influence of the crucial parameters of the model on the outputs, and managerial insights are provided. According to the achieved results, the suggested model and the developed hybrid method demonstrate a good performance which shows their efficiency.