A robust design for a closed-loop supply chain network under an uncertain environment

摘要

This paper presents a robust design for a multi-product, multi-echelon, closed-loop logistic network model in an uncertain environment. The model includes a general network structure considering both forward and reverse processes that can be used in various industries, such as electronics, digital equipment, and vehicles. Because logistic network design is a time consuming and costly project as well as a strategic and sensitive decision (i.e. the change of such decision is difficult in the future), a robust optimisation approach is adopted to cope with the uncertainty of demand and the return rate described by a finite set of possible scenarios. Hence, to obtain robust solutions with better time, the scenario relaxation algorithm is employed for the proposed model. Numerical examples and a sensitivity analysis are presented to demonstrate the significance and applicability of the presented model. It is shown that solutions resulted from the suggested approach insure more situations, especially in worst case ones. The results show that although the profit values of the robust configuration are less than the deterministic configuration, the robust configuration is more reliable than the deterministic one because the deterministic configuration is infeasible under some demand and return rates (i.e. in the worst cases). Moreover, the results show the computing time superiority of the algorithm compared to the extensive form model as well as optimality of the resulted solutions.