Designing an IoT-enabled supply chain network considering the perspective of the Fifth Industrial Revolution: Application in the medical devices industry

ABSTRACT

The rapid growth of technology, environmental concerns, and disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have led researchers to pay more attention to an emerging concept called the fifth industrial revolution (I5.0). Despite the high importance of the I5.0, the literature shows that no study investigated the supply chain network design problem based on the I5.0 pillars. Hence, this research develops a multi-stage decision-making framework to configure a closed-loop supply chain based on I5.0 dimensions to cover this gap. In the first stage, the score of technologies that utilized in the supply chain is calculated using the analytic hierarchy process method. Afterwards, in the second stage, a mathematical model is proposed to configure the supply chain. Then, Furthermore, an efficient solution method, named the fuzzy lexicographic multi-choice Chebyshev goal programming method, is developed to obtain the optimal solution. In general, the main contributions of the current study can be divided into two major parts as follows (i) the current study is the first research that incorporates the dimensions of the I5.0 into the supply chain network design problem, and (ii) this work develops a novel and efficient solution method. In this regard, the major problems and challenges that existed include the limitation of available resources in relation to Industry 5, especially in the field of the supply chain, as well as quantifying the elements of Industry 5.0 in the form of a mathematical programming model. © 2023