The forward and reverse pharmaceutical supply chain network design considering tainted product delivery

Abstract

This paper deals with pharmaceutical supply-chain network design considering time periods. Due to the importance of healthcare management in the forward side of supply chain and increasing amount of waste in recent years, we address both forward and back side flow of pharmaceutical network in this paper to satisfy patients' need and control the useless materials to achieve environmental considerations. We proposed a seven echelon closed-loop network with capacitated facilities in which time periods, transportation mode and production technology are included. It is noteworthy that inspection at distribution centres is applied to prevent tainted material delivery on the forward side. These useless materials have been sent to collection centres to be disposed of in the best way. Furthermore, the model of this paper determines the number of production centres, distribution centres, collection centres, production technology, transportation mode and the best way in the process of waste disposing and tries to satisfy consumer's need on time and minimise the network costs. Some numerical examples are proposed to explain the results.