A review of integrated supply chain network design models: Key issues for vaccine supply chains

In general, vaccines are recognized as an important means to protect populations against infectious diseases. We show that vaccines do not behave like commodity goods and elaborate on the key issues for vaccine supply chain design. This paper reviews the literature on model-based supply chain network design in order to identify the applicability of these models to the key issues of the design of a vaccine supply chain. We study whether the decisions at strategic, tactical and operational levels of the reviewed literature are able to address vaccine supply chain key issues as limited shelf life, cold chain distribution and accessing remote areas. Furthermore, we provide an overview of how uncertainty is incorporated in the reviewed literature and is able to incorporate disease epidemics, tender procurement, lead time variability and demand variability. Our future vaccine supply chain network needs to be sustainable, hereby taking the preferences of different stakeholders into account for obtaining a set of economical, technological and value key performance indicators that need to be satisfied by the design. Finally, we discuss the real-life applicability of the research up to now and discuss similarities and dissimilarities of vaccine supply chains with other pharmaceutical supply chains. (c) 2016 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.