Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Ph.D student, Department of Industrial Engineering, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.

2 Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.

10.52547/jimp.2022.227674.1369

Abstract

In this study, the interactions of entities located in a pharmaceutical industrial zone, including relationships between suppliers, manufacturers and customers, are optimized using the concept of supply hub, as a logistics service provider under 3PL management. In this regard, a new mathematical model for the supply chain of this industrial zone has been proposed in a sustainable approach, in which the economic, social and environmental axes are considered in this model and then carefully solved by GAMS software. The goal is to minimize the costs imposed on the system, comprising the operating cost of the supply hub, the cost of transporting raw materials and products, the cost of ordering, the cost of storing raw materials and finished products, the cost of shortage of finished products considered as back-ordered, the cost of hiring and firing as well as the cost of destroying the waste of these pharmaceutical factories. Since solving large-scale problems in this context is time-consuming, an efficient heuristic relaxation-based approach is proposed in this paper. Then, a series of sample instances inspired by the case study have been implemented. The results obtained by GAMS and the proposed heuristic method are then compared, indicating a significant improvement in computational time in exchange for the use of this efficient heuristic. Finally, to understand the sensitivity of different axes of the sustainability approach, several sensitivity analyses have been conducted and useful managerial and operational insights are presented for top management of such industries.

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