Marketing

Remanufacturing

Reverse logistics

Engineering

Ecology

Biology

Environmental economics

Microeconomics

Sustainability

Control engineering

Commerce

Economics

Computer science

Manufacturing engineering

Business

Pareto principle

Waste management

Physics

Astronomy

Biofuel

Chain (unit)

Supply chain

Operations management

Industrial organization

Closed loop

Production (economics)

Journal of Cleaner Production

With the primary aim to investigate the financial self-reliance of the reverse-chain, present study formulates a cost-efficient and customer-centric closed-loop supply chain model that links the herbal medicines with biofuel. The proposed model simultaneously considers the production of second-generation biofuel from used products in the reverse-chain and the re-manufacturing of casing soil as returnable items in manufacturing-chain to address the environmental concerns and ensure a long-term sustainability. Concurrently, this study ameliorates the satisfaction of the retail customers of herbal medicines along with the large clients of second-generation biofuel. In order to achieve more desirable optimal value of main objective function, the present study develops an emended minmax method based semi-autonomized multi-objective optimization algorithm by amending the classical minmax method. Apart from determining the more desirable optimal values of this model with the proposed algorithm in certitude-state, this study determines another Pareto optimal solution of this model under fuzziness in incertitude-state. The sensitivity analysis of ten key parameters of proposed model together with five graphical patterns advocates for the usages of the advanced equipment at both pharmaceutical plants and recycle-plants. This study asks to cautiously and systematically upgrade the machinery at factory. For legislators, while this study appeals to shoot up the business-commitment of pharmaceutical plants to assure a steady availability of herbal medicines, this favors only a reasonable obligation to procure used substrates by recycle-plants.

Economically independent reverse logistics of customer-centric closed-loop supply chain for herbal medicines and biofuel