A Modified Priority-Based Encoding for Design of a Closed-Loop Supply Chain Network Using a Discrete League Championship Algorithm

In a closed-loop supply chain network, the aim is to ensure a smooth flow of materials and attaining the maximum value from returning and end-of-life goods. This paper presents a single-objective deterministic mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model for the closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) network design problem consisting of plants, collection centers, disposal centers, and customer zones. Our model minimizes the total costs comprising fixed opening cost of plants, collection, disposal centers, and transportation costs of products among the nodes. As supply chain network design problems belong to the class of NP-hard problems, a novel league championship algorithm (LCA) with a modified priority-based encoding is applied to find a near-optimal solution. New operators are defined for the LCA to search the discrete space. Numerical comparison of our proposed encoding with the existing approaches in the literature is indicative of the high quality performance of the proposed encoding.