A Supply Chain Network Design for Managing Hospital Solid Waste

Abstract

Health care solid wastes include all types of waste that are produced as a result ofmedical and therapeutic activities in hospitals and health centers. About 15% to20% of these waste materials are infectious waste, which falls within the categoryof hazardous materials. Infectious waste is the one that must be treated beforedisposal or recycling. Hence, this paper seeks to develop a bi-objective mixedinteger programming model for the infectious waste management. In the proposedmodel, in addition to minimizing the chain costs, the reduction of risks for thepopulation exposed to the spread of contamination resulting from infectious wasteis also considered. For this purpose, a multi-echelon chain is proposed by takinginto account the green location-routing problem, which involves the location ofrecycling, disposal, and treatment centers through various treatment technologiesand routing of vehicles between treatment levels and the hospital. The routingproblem has been considered to be multi-depot wherein the criterion of reducingthe cost of fuel consumption of heterogeneous cars is used for green routing.Finally, a hybrid meta-heuristic algorithm based on ICA and GA is developedand, following its validation, its function in solving large-scale problems has beeninvestigated. Results show that the proposed algorithm is effective and efficient.

Keywords

• keywords: infectious waste management
• mathematical programming
• location-routing problem
• imperialist competitive algorithm
• genetic algorithm