Economically independent reverse logistics of customer-centric closed-loop supply chain for herbal medicines and biofuel

Abstract

With the primary aim to investigate the financial self-reliance of the reverse-chain, present study formulates a cost-efficient and customer-centric closed-loop supply chain model that links the herbal medicines with biofuel. The proposed model simultaneously considers the production of second-generation biofuel from used products in the reverse-chain and the re-manufacturing of casing soil as returnable items in manufacturing-chain to address the environmental concerns and ensure a long-term sustainability. Concurrently, this study ameliorates the satisfaction of the retail customers of herbal medicines along with the large clients of second-generation biofuel. In order to achieve more desirable optimal value of main objective function, the present study develops an emended minmax method based semi-autonomized multi-objective optimization algorithm by amending the classical minmax method. Apart from determining the more desirable optimal values of this model with the proposed algorithm in certitude-state, this study determines another Pareto optimal solution of this model under fuzziness in incertitude-state. The sensitivity analysis of ten key parameters of proposed model together with five graphical patterns advocates for the usages of the advanced equipment at both pharmaceutical plants and recycle-plants. This study asks to cautiously and systematically upgrade the machinery at factory. For legislators, while this study appeals to shoot up the business-commitment of pharmaceutical plants to assure a steady availability of herbal medicines, this favors only a reasonable obligation to procure used substrates by recycle-plants.