Application of Exact and Multi-Heuristic Approaches to a Sustainable Closed Loop Supply Chain Network Design

Abdul Salam Khan, Qazi Salman Khalid, Khawar Naeem, Rafiq Ahmad, Razaullah Khan, Waqas Saleem and Catalin Iulian Pruncu
Additional contact information
Abdul Salam Khan: NUST Business School (NBS), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad 44100, Pakistan
Qazi Salman Khalid: Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar 25100, Pakistan
Khawar Naeem: Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar 25100, Pakistan
Rafiq Ahmad: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 1H9, Canada
Razaullah Khan: Department of Mechanical Engineering Technology, University of Technology, Nowshera 24100, Pakistan
Waqas Saleem: Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Institute of Technology, F91 YW50 Sligo, Ireland
Catalin Iulian Pruncu: Design, Manufacturing & Engineering Management, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G1 1XJ, UK

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 5, 1-25

Abstract: Closed-loop supply chains (CLSC) are gaining popularity due to their efficiency in addressing economic, environmental, and social concerns. An important point to ponder in the distribution of CLSC is that imperfect refrigeration and bad road conditions may result in product non-conformance during the transit and thus such products are to be returned to the supply node. This may hinder the level of customer satisfaction. This paper presents a sustainable closed-loop supply chain framework coupled with cross-docking subject to product non-conformance. A cost model is proposed to investigate the economic and environmental aspects of such systems. The transportation cost is analyzed in terms of total carbon emissions. A set of metaheuristics are administered to solve the model and a novel lower bound is proposed to relax the complexity of the proposed model. The results of different size problems are compared with the branch and bound approach and the proposed lower bound. The results indicate that the proposed research framework, mathematical model, and heuristic schemes can aid the decision-makers in a closed-loop supply chain context.

Keywords: sustainable logistics scheduling; closed loop supply chain; cross-docking; tabu search; simulated annealing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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