Modeling third-party reverse logistics for healthcare waste recycling in the post-pandemic era

AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic has increased the demand for life-saving devices known as ‘ventilators,’ which help critically ill patients breathe. Owing to the high global demand for ventilators and other medical equipment, many Indian nonmedical equipment companies have risen to meet this demand. This unexpected demand for ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic, similar to that for other EOL electronic medical devices, has become a severe problem for the nation. Consequently, the healthcare industry must efficiently handle EOL ventilators, which can be outsourced to 3PRLPs. 3PRLPs play a vital role in a company’s reverse logistics activities. This study emphasises the 3PRLP selection process as a complex decision-making problem and the optimisation of order allocation to qualified 3PRLPs. As a result, this study proposes a two-phase hybrid decision-making problem. First phase combines the two multi-attribute decision-making methods to select 3PRLPs based on their assessed SPS and Second phase, the evaluated SPS was utilised as one of the objectives of a multi-objective linear programming model to allocate orders to the selected 3PRLPs. To solve the proposed model, both classical and modern approaches were used. The results show that the proposed framework can be successfully implemented in the current scenario of the healthcare industry.KEYWORDS: Reverse logisticswaste recyclingmulti-objective programmingorder allocationhealthcare industry Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Data availability StatementThe data supporting this study’s findings are available on request from the corresponding author.Notes1 Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1067081/generation-electronic-waste-globally-forecast/2 Source: https://theroundup.org/global-e-waste-statistics/.3 Source: https://www.deccanherald.com/business/covid-19-automakers-medical-device-makers-join-hands-to-produce-ventilators-819878.html.4 Source: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/covid-19-ventilator-shortage-manufacturing-solution/5 Source: https://straitsresearch.com/report/ventilators-market6 Source:https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/did-ventilators-from-pm-cares-fund-fail-or-states-failed-to-manage-them-1803473-2021-05-17Additional informationNotes on contributorsMeenu SinghDr. Meenu Singh received a Ph.D. in operations research and decision science from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Scientific Computing at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, India, in 2022. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at VŠB – Technical University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic. Her research focuses on operational research, supply chain management, data analysis, mathematical modelling, multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) process, and the application of soft computing techniques.Sunil Kumar JauharDr. Sunil Kumar Jauhar is currently working as an assistant professor in the operations and decision science area at IIM Kashipur. He graduated from SGSITS Indore with a B. E. in Industrial and Production Engineering, VNIT Nagpur with an M. Tech. in Industrial Engineering, and IIT Roorkee with a Ph.D. in Operations and Supply Chain Management. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ted Rogers School of Management, Toronto Metropolitan University (FKA: Ryerson University), Canada, during 2018–19. Prior to joining IIM Kashipur, he was a faculty member at IIM Jammu. His research interests include supply chain sustainability, circular economy, industry 4.0, digital transformation, and machine learning. He has contributed several articles to research journals. Among them are the Annals of Operations Research, International Journal of Production Research, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Business Strategy and the Environment, Journal of Cleaner Production, and editing a special issue of Computers and Industrial Engineering. He is a member of several research societies, such as the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS), the Decision Sciences Institute (DSI), and the Canadian Operational Research Society (CORS). Currently, he is involved in the Indo-Czech joint R&D project under the India-Czech Scientific and Technological Cooperation Program. This is a project funded by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, and the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports (MEYS) of the Republic of Czech.Millie PantProf. Mille Pant is working as a Professor in the Department of Applied Science and Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, Roorkee, India. She did her Ph.D. from the Mathematics department, IIT Roorkee, Roorkee, India. She has published more than 200 articles in various journals and conferences of national and international repute. Her areas of interest include numerical optimisation and operations research, evolutionary algorithms and supply chain management, and swarm intelligence techniques.Sanjoy Kumar PaulProf. Sanjoy Kumar Paul is an Associate Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management at the UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia. Sanjoy’s research interests include supply chain risk management, resilience and sustainability, applied operations research, modeling and simulation, and intelligent decision-making. Sanjoy has published more than 120 articles in top-tier journals and conferences, including the European Journal of Operational Research, Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, International Journal of Production Economics, Journal of Business Research, International Journal of Production Research, Computers and Operations Research, Computers & Industrial Engineering, International Journal of Logistics Management, Business Strategy and the Environment, Journal of Cleaner Production, and Annals of Operations Research, among many others. He is also an associate editor, area editor, editorial board member, and active reviewer of several reputed journals. Sanjoy has successfully secured external grants from the Department of Defence, Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Meat and Livestock Australia Limited. Sanjoy has received several awards in his career, including ASOR Rising Star Award from the Australian Society for Operations Research, Excellence in Early Career Research Award from UTS Business School, the Stephen Fester prize for most outstanding thesis from UNSW, and high impact publications awards for publishing articles in top-tier journals. Based on his citation records in 2020, 2021 and 2022, he was included in the top 2% of scientists in author databases of standardised citation indicators.