Extension of a Forward/Reverse Logistic Network in Health Care under Uncertainty and Disaster

Population growth, changing lifestyles, increased diseases, and natural and unnatural accidents are the cause of growing importance of health care chains. On one hand, the importance of blood as a rare and crucial stuff and on the other hand, the specific conditions of transportation and maintenance make researchers to be challenged in recent years. The importance of this area especially in a crisis and a severe shortage of blood can be increased. In this paper, a mathematical model of a closed-loop blood supply chain under uncertainty is proposed, in which reverse logistics and emergencies situation are also to be considered. Due to the complexity in solving the proposed model, after proposing accurate method to validate the model, a hybrid algorithm based on genetic algorithm (GA) and simulated annealing (SA) is used. Then, the validation of this hybrid algorithm is evaluated in comparison with the results of GAMS IDE/Cplex software in solving small, medium and large-sized problems. Finally, the results of the sensitivity analysis are presented.