Prevention of post-pandemic crises: A green sustainable and reliable healthcare supply chain network design for emergency medical products

The COVID-19 pandemic happened exactly when no one expected it and many people died due to the lack of medical equipment. Although pulse oximeters and thermometers were only one of the virus detection equipment, the lack of that equipment could lead to people not knowing about the disease and then the death of those people. Given that these medical devices are very vital in the era of a pandemic, and much less in the later, it is required to provide the best conditions for their use in a closed-loop healthcare supply chain network in post-pandemic. In this paper, a scenario-based two-stage stochastic programming three-objective model for designing a green closed-loop supply chain network is presented. Cost minimization, reliability maximization, and critical response maximization are the objectives of the proposed model. The third objective function is considered for the critical response based on the choice of transportation method. The greenhouse gas emissions for all supply chain elements are considered uncertain and controlled in several possible scenarios. By using an accelerated Benders decomposition algorithm, the mathematical model was solved in different dimensions and the result was analyzed and evaluated in different scenarios. The results demonstrate that the acceleration of Benders bonds reduces the convergence speed of the algorithm by 41%. Our study provides managerial insights into sustainability and reliability, enhancing healthcare supply chain resilience during and after pandemics.