|
Recently, there is a growing concern about the environmental and social
footprint of business operations. While most of the papers in the field of
supply chain network design focus on economic performance, recently, some
studies have considered environmental dimensions. However, there still
exists a gap in quantitatively modeling social impacts together with
environmental and economic impacts. In this study, this gap is covered by
simultaneously considering the three pillars of sustainability in the
network design problem. A mixed integer programming model is developed for
this multi-objective closed-loop supply chain network problem. In order to
solve this NP-hard problem, three novel hybrid metaheuristic methods are
developed which are based on adapted imperialist competitive algorithms and
variable neighborhood search. To test the efficiency and effectiveness of
these algorithms, they are compared not only with each other but also with
other strong algorithms. The results indicate that the nested approach
achieves better solutions compared with the others. Finally, a case study
for a glass industry is used to demonstrate the applicability of the
approach.
|
