The outbreak of an epidemic disease may pose significant treats to human beings and may further lead to a global crisis. In order to control the spread of an epidemic, the effective management of rapidly increased medical waste through establishing a temporary reverse logistics system is of vital importance. However, no research has been conducted with the focus on the design of an epidemic reverse logistics network for dealing with medical waste during epidemic outbreaks, which, if improperly treated, may accelerate disease spread and pose a significant risk for both medical staffs and patients. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel multi-objective multi-period mixed integer program for reverse logistics network design in epidemic outbreaks, which aims at determining the best locations of temporary facilities and the transportation strategies for effective management of the exponentially increased medical waste within a very short period. The application of the model is illustrated with a case study based on the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 in Wuhan, China. Even though the uncertainty of the future COVID-19 spread tendency is very high at the time of this research, several general policy recommendations can still be obtained based on computational experiments and quantitative analyses. Among other insights, the results suggest installing temporary incinerators may be an effective solution for managing the tremendous increase of medical waste during the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, but the location selection of these temporary incinerators is of significant importance. Due to the limitation on available data and knowledge at present stage, more real-world information are needed to assess the effectiveness of the current solution.

Abstract:Reverse logistics is believed to be one of the most promising solutions for capturing the remaining values from used products and has been extensively focused by both academics and practitioners during the past two decades. Conceptual framework, mathematical programming and computational algorithms have been developed for decision making at strategic, tactical and operational levels of a reverse supply chain. In this paper, a novel idea for the design and planning of a general reverse logistics network is suggested and formulated through multi-objective mixed integer programming. The reverse logistics system is an independent network and comprises of three echelons for collection, remanufacturing, recycling, energy recovery and disposal of used products. The mathematical model not only takes into account the minimization of system operating costs, but also considers minimization of carbon emissions related to the transportation and processing of used products, and the minimum rate of resource utilization is also required in order to minimize the waste of resources in landfill. Illustration, sensitivity analysis and numerical experimentation are given to show the applicability and computational efficiency of the proposed model. This work provides an alternative approach to account both economic and environmental sustainability of reverse logistics system. The result explicitly shows the trade-off between the costs and carbon emissions, cost effectiveness for improving environmental performance, and influences from resource utilization, all of which have great practical implication on decision making of network configurations and transportation planning of reverse logistics system. For future development of this work, suggestions are also given latter in this paper. (2) is not monetized, which means the carbon emissions are not measured by the same units of system operating costs, so the…" 5, Page 14 Line 5 Eplain why "the maximum number for landfill is one" Powered by Editorial Manager® and ProduXion Manager® from Aries Systems CorporationThank you very much for the question. The number of facilities in illustrative example is flexible to change, e.g. the maximum number of landfill can be changed according with the requirement of decision maker. The main consideration for setting the maximum number of landfill to "1" is that for the given system, one landfill is able to fulfill the requirement for waste disposal. 6, Page 16Line 57 Do you mean "slop" or "slope"? Response to Reviewer CommentsThank you very much for the correction. We have revised the text from "slop" to "slope". 7, Page 18Line 7 where is "changes, but..." write "changed, but..." State what do you mean by "break -even point" Define RuR Thank you very much for the correction. We have corrected "changes, but…" to "changed, but…"The explanation of break-even point is added in the text at page 18 as "Besides, the break-even points from which the system performance starts to change with the increase or decrease of required utilization rate can...

A carbon-constrained stochastic optimization model with augmented multi-criteria scenario-based risk-averse solution for reverse logistics network design under uncertainty,

Today, the increased public concern about sustainable development and more stringent environmental regulations have become important driving forces for value recovery from end-of-life and end-of use products through reverse logistics. Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) contains both valuable components that need to be recycled and hazardous substances that have to be properly treated or disposed of, so the design of a reverse logistics system for sustainable treatment of WEEE is of paramount importance. This paper presents a stochastic mixed integer programming model for designing and planning a generic multi-source, multi-echelon, capacitated, and sustainable reverse logistics network for WEEE management under uncertainty. The model takes into account both economic efficiency and environmental impacts in decision-making, and the environmental impacts are evaluated in terms of carbon emissions. A multi-criteria two-stage scenario-based solution method is employed and further developed in this study for generating the optimal solution for the stochastic optimization problem. The proposed model and solution method are validated through a numerical experiment and sensitivity analyses presented later in this paper, and an analysis of the results is also given to provide a deep managerial insight into the application of the proposed stochastic optimization model.

Incorporating flexible capacity in the planning of a multiproduct multi-echelon sustainable reverse logistics network under uncertainty,