A meta heuristic approach for reliable capacitated facility joint inventory-location problem with round-trip transportation under imperfect information of disruption in a Fuzzy environment

In today’s systems and networks, disruption is inevitable. Designing a reliable system to overcome probable facility disruptions plays a crucial role in planning and management. This article proposes a reliable capacitated facility joint inventory-location problem where location-independent disruption may occur in facilities. The system tries to satisfy customer’s demands and considers penalty costs for unmet customer demand. The article aims to minimize total costs such as establishing inventory, uncovered demand’s penalty, and transportation costs. While many articles in this area only use exact methods to solve the problem, this article uses a metaheuristic algorithm, the red deer algorithm, and the exact methods. Various numerical examples have shown the outstanding performance of the red deer algorithm compared to exact methods. Sensitivity analyses show the impacts of various parameters on the objective function and the optimal facility layouts. Lastly, managerial insights will be proposed based on sensitivity analysis