A joint pricing and sustainable closed-loop supply chain network design problem using blockchain technology

In recent years, blockchain technology changed supply chain processes enormously. Moreover, transparency and traceability became necessary in supply chains due to customers’ need for more information on services or products. This paper attempts to ascertain transparency in a joint pricing and sustainable closed-loop supply chain network design problem using blockchain technology. To assure supply chain transparency, the pricing process is done using smart contracts. Smart contracts can modify malfunctions while purchasing returned products from customers. Then, using the derived prices of adopting smart contracts, the optimal design of the closed-loop supply chain network is obtained in an optimization process. Afterward, a fuzzy satisfying approach is used to find the optimal solution among economic, social, and environmental objective functions. Then, the model is evaluated using a numerical case problem. Sensitivity analyses are explicitly done to show the impacts of considering a blockchain-based method, production, and distribution capacity expansions, and sustainability concerns in the proposed problem. It is also shown that implementing a blockchain-based method delivers %5 more profit on average. It is also proved that expansions in production capacity are approximately %15 better than increasing distribution capacities. Finally, it is demonstrated that the fuzzy satisfying approach can deliver an optimal solution maximizing the minimum satisfaction of each objective function.