Designing and Solving Location-Routing-Allocation Problems in a Sustainable Blood Supply Chain Network of Blood Transport in Uncertainty Conditions

Purpose: In this paper, a location-routing-allocation problem in a multiobjectiveblood supply chain network was designed to reduce the total costof the supply chain network, the maximum unmet demand from distributionof goods, and decline greenhouse gas emissions due to the transport of goodsamong different levels of the network. The network levels considered formodeling include blood donation clusters, permanent and temporary bloodtransfusion centers, major laboratory centers and blood supply points. Otherobjectives included determining the optimal number and location of potentialfacilities, optimal allocation of the flow of goods between the selectedfacilities and determining the most suitable transport route to distribute thegoods to customer areas in uncertainty conditions.Methodology: Given that the model was NP-hard, the NSGA II andMOPSO algorithms were used to solve the model with a priority-basedsolution.Findings: The results of the design of the experiments showed the highefficiency of the NSGA II algorithm in comparison with the MOPSOalgorithm in finding efficient solutions.Originality/Value: This study addresses the issue of blood perishabilityfrom blood sampling to distribution to customer demand areas.

Keywords:

Location-Routing- Allocation , Blood Supply Chain Network Design , Perishability in Transport , Meta-heuristicAlgorithms , Uncertainty