Closed-loop supply chain design and pricing in competitive conditions by considering the variable value of return products using the whale optimization algorithm

Abstract

In today’s competitive environment, organizations, in addition to trying to improve their production conditions, have a special focus on their supply chain components. Cooperation between supply chain members always reduces unforeseen costs and speeds up the response to customer demand. In the new situation, according to the category of return products and their reprocessing, supply chains have found a closed-loop structure. In this research, the aim was to design a closed-loop supply chain in competitive conditions. For this purpose, the key decisions of this chain included locating retail centers, adjusting the inventory of chain members, and selling prices of final products, optimally determined. For this purpose, a nonlinear integer mathematical model is presented. One of the most important innovations of this research was considering the variable value for return products. Then, in order to solve the proposed model, a whale optimization algorithm was developed. Numerical results from the sample examples showed that the whale algorithm had a very good performance in terms of response quality and speed-of-action in finding the optimal solution to this problem.