Designing a Closed-loop Supply Chain Network Considering Social Factors; A Case Study on Avocado Industry

Recently, the closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) and its application to various fields have been an area of great interest. Despite the importance of CLSC, there remains a paucity of evidence on agriculture in this area. In this work, a CLSC network for the avocado industry is firstly designed by developing a bi-objective model considering the costs of the avocado industry and the social factor of job employment opportunities. The two objectives are the total costs minimization and job employment maximization in various opened locations. To validate the proposed model, a real case study in Puebla, Mexico, is addressed. The GAMS software and its CPLEX solver are utilized to find the best optimum solutions and determine the best locations to open different centers. The applicability of the proposed network is verified by conducting several sensitivity analyses on the important parameters of the problem. According to the obtained results, demand has the most effect on this network in which that a 25 percent decrease in demand can increase the total cost (the first objective) up to 40 percent and improve employment efficiency (the second objective) up to around 30 percent, simultaneously. (c) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This study designed a closed-loop supply chain network for the avocado industry, considering costs and job opportunities through a bi-objective model, and validated it with a real case study in Mexico. Results showed that demand is the most influential parameter on the network's effectiveness.