Seyyed-Mahdi Hosseini-Motlagh

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Iran University of Science and Technology

Previous studies related to the blood supply chain under blockchain technology have concentrated solely on the managerial role of blockchain technology in this chain, and no systematic examination has been conducted using quantitative modeling methods. This study focuses on developing a blood supply chain based on blockchain technology using a simu...

This study contributes to the literature by introducing the role of “location information sharing strategy” in optimizing the closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) performance. In the investigated CLSC, one manufacturer collects the used products through two collectors. The collectors may face collection disruptions and adopt the location information sh...

By the spread of coronavirus disease 2019, the first option of most consumers for shopping is being e-marketplaces. As a result, under such a situation, e-marketplaces face intense competition. Accordingly, adopting an effective strategy for gaining more market share is significant for them. In the context of electronic marketplace literature, the...

The highly pollution-intensive fashion industry requires manufacturers to do substantial sustainable practices over time. Concurrently, customers’ environmental awareness challenges manufacturers to balance sustainability efforts with profitability and meet customers’ evolving inclinations. Prior literature has primarily considered customers’ prefe...

The biofuel development from rice straw has the main benefit that preventing environmental problems of burning rice straw that leads to air pollution. Since the environmental impacts of fossil fuels have increased in recent years, the development of renewable energy sources has been on the rise. Sustainability and low environmental impact are some...

With the severe outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), researchers are motivated to develop efficient methods to face related issues. The present study aims to design a resilient health system to offer medical services to COVID-19 patients and prevent further disease outbreaks by social distancing, resiliency, cost, and commuting distance as...

To achieve a competitive advantage, corporations are growingly adopting strategies to effectively promote their market demand. Trade credit payment and pricing strategies provided by corporates can efficiently influence customers’ purchasing behavior. Although granting a trade credit strategy can increase corporations’ market share, such a strategy...

Tons of hazardous pharmaceutical waste is introduced to the environment each year, showing the significance of medicines reverse channels. Meanwhile, establishing a pharmaceutical reverse channel is complex and costly, and therefore misestimation of uncertainty in waste collection operations can lead to severe financial losses. As conventional meth...

Urban traffic in many developing countries has affected travel time and fuel costs, causing disturbances in the transportation schedule of companies dealing with logistic issues. The resulting environmental impact is another driver forcing these companies to reconsider their transportation schedule. Conventional pollution routing problems (PRPs) tr...

In reverse supply chain (RSC) systems, disruptions in the collection process of used items may negatively influence the efficiency of RSC participators. Inspired by a real case study, this paper contributes to the RSC systems coordination literature by analyzing the effect of collection disruptions on the efficiency of an RSC system with dual colle...

In recent decades, due to the growing sustainable development concerns, the supply chains members, such as manufacturers and retailers, are interested in investing in environmental sustainability and social sustainability issues to gain more market share in today’s competitive business environment. This paper contributes to the literature by propos...

This paper proposes a novel approach towards inventory routing problems with fuzzy time windows considering customer satisfaction for arrival intervals. In the presented model, a multi-priority structure for visiting the customers is proposed. In this study, customers are divided into three categories according to their features. These features hav...

Motivated by a real issue in Iran blood transfusion organization and hemophilia community, this paper aims to design and plan an integrated plasma and plasma-derived medicines supply chain network to improve efficiency and timely access to high-quality services. This paper contributes to the existing literature by incorporating four factors, namely...

This paper deals with statutory antibiotic waste management in a two-echelon sustainable pharmaceutical reverse supply chain. Due to detrimental impacts of improper disposal of unwanted/expired medicines on the environment, governments enact legislation regarding pharmaceutical waste management. According to environmental legislation, the manufactu...

The level of product innovation is a prerequisite for high-technology product manufacturers to remain competitive. However, the customers of such products may behave differently in adopting innovative products, as proven by the innovation-adoption theories. Accordingly, the marketing strategy of distributing firms becomes critical in promoting the...

This study is conducted based on real issues observed in online retailing industry where an electronic retailer competes with a traditional retailer. To gain a competitive advantage, in addition to pricing strategy, the electronic retailer provides a warranty replacement service to customers, and the traditional retailer offers sales service. This...

Motivated by the COVID-19 (C-19) pandemic and the challenges it poses to global health and the medical communities, this research aims to investigate the factors affecting of reduction health inequalities related to the C-19 to tackle the increasing number of outbreaks and their social consequences in such a pandemic. Hence, we design a COVID-19 te...

In recent decades, many firms have broadened their single-channel supply chains (SCs) into dual-channel supply chains (DSCs), endeavoring to gain more market shares. However, due to the resulting competitive situation, the successful performance of DSCs is closely related to the marketing strategies adopted by the competitive channels. This study e...

This paper proposes control strategies to allocate COVID-19 patients to screening facilities, health facilities, and quarantine facilities for minimizing the spread of the virus by these patients. To calculate the transmission rate, we propose a function that accounts for contact rate, duration of the contact, age structure of the population, susce...

In many real-world situations, a distributor visits a downstream retailer to receive orders of products with fixed shelf-life and then delivers them after a lead-time. Under such circumstances, the retailer should determine its safety stock level by considering the demand uncertainty and the distributor's visit interval. In this paper, we coordinat...

In supply chain (SC) systems, channel coordination can be achieved by incentive alignment contracts. The contracting mechanisms reported in the literature are usually “short-term-based” and the respective decisions are assumed to be static. However, real world supply chains (SCs) operate in the long term and decisions may evolve when time passes. A...

Today, wheat and its by-products are considered the most important food grain source for humans across the world. Accordingly, integrally investigating the wheat supply chain is of great importance in strategic decisions. In this respect, this paper addresses a real case study of wheat supply chain in Iran as well as the entities involved it. Prese...

This article proposes a novel design of a disaster relief blood supply chain network with multiple echelons and multiple products. It incorporates: (1) the blood donors’ behavior and preference for the selection of facilities where the blood donation takes place, (2) an estimating the quantity of the injured people under each disaster scenario, (3)...

Because of government intervention, such as quarantine and cancellation of public events at the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak and donors’ health scare of exposure to the virus in medical centers, the number of blood donors has considerably decreased. In some countries, the rate of blood donation has reached lower than 30%. Accordingly, in this stud...

Despite the fact that medical responses are crucial for saving precious lives during any humanitarian crisis (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic), healthcare infrastructure in many communities are partially covered or are not covered yet. In order to strengthen the health system response to such crisis, especially in low- to middle-income communities, thi...

Storage of unused medications at consumer zones could endanger both public health and the environment. Many pharmaceutical companies invest in collection of unwanted medications to improve corporate social responsibility (CSR) in pharmaceutical sector. This paper proposes a novel method for collaborative decision-making on order quantity and CSR in...

This study develops an analytical model based on the evolutionary game theory to analytically investigate the pricing and credit time strategies of a population of pharma-distributors towards demand promotion in the long term. This study determines the evolutionary stable strategy for the pharma-distributors’ population, and finds which marketing s...

This study contributes to the periodic review inventory system literature by: (1) investigating customer service level (CSL) as a social responsibility in pharmaceutical supply chains (PSCs) and (2) proposing supply chain contracting to achieve win-win coordination and guarantee a satisfied CSL. Specifically, considering the demand uncertainty as o...

This study develops a coordination scheme based upon discount contract to coordinate promotional efforts and periodic review replenishment decisions. We consider a supplier-retailer chain with stochastic demand dependent on promotional efforts. The retailer uses a periodic review order-up-to-level inventory system and makes promotional efforts as a...

Environmental concerns such as water pollution and global warming resulted in considerable attention being paid to sustainable bioenergy. Due to the eco-friendly nature of sustainable bioenergy, we investigated an integrated bioenergy supply chain network design. In the proposed network, different energy crops, Azadirachta indica and Eruca sativa a...

The purpose of this study is to analytically coordinate joint pricing and periodic review ordering choices for a supply chain (SC) facing stochastic price-dependent demand. In this paper, first, the optimal inventory and pricing strategies made by SC members are obtained under decentralized and centralized models. Thereafter, employing a trade cred...

Motivated by a real-world case, this paper deals with uncertainty issues in the resilient and sustainable electricity supply chain network design. Uncertainty is always found in electricity demand prediction and perfect foresight is not possible. The resilience of electricity networks in face of uncertainty can prevent catastrophic impacts. Besides...

A coordination model in a reverse supply chain (RSC) considering product acquisition management and competition of third-party collectors is developed. Motivated by a case study of plastic recycling, collectors not only compete on the return incentives paid to consumers but also control the quality level of returned products delivered to the remanu...

Unique features of solar energy, such as the low cost of operation and low pollution, make photovoltaic power plants attractive. Despite the advantages of these power plants, such as low cost of operation and operating without pollution, their high establishment cost compared to that of the conventional fossil fuel-fired power plants prevents their...

Uncertainty in real-world situations disrupts operations, including the collection process in closed-loop supply chains (CLSCs). A collection disruption is more critical in the pharmaceutical sector since pharmaceutical leftovers contain chemicals that threaten the environment and human health. This paper revolves around the challenges of a real ph...

In disaster relief, one major concern is to have an efficient network to supply and distribute critical items such as blood to the affected areas. Based on a real case study, a tailored disaster relief blood supply chain problem is carried out for the responsive and reliable supply of blood. The case study necessitates incorporating three criteria,...

Managing platelets supply chain network has proved challenging. Besides stochastic demand, the high perishability of platelets and the diversity of their demands make the management more intricate. As a motivation to conduct this paper, we investigate a real-world case study facing a variety of platelet demands to satisfy. Being the first-ever stud...

In the literature, extensive researches have been done regarding the remanufacturing in closed-loop supply chains (CLSCs) and energy-saving efforts in the forward logistics. However, despite the importance of energy-saving effort in the remanufacturing process, its relevancy in the context of CLSCs has not been investigated. This study extends the...

Nowadays, concerns about fossil fuel depletion, ecological crisis, and energy security lead to renewable energy generation. The present study provides a multi-objective, multi-period, multi-product integrated sustainable-resilient mixed-integer linear programming model for the optimal design of second-generation biofuel supply chain networks under...

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and pricing decisions are proposed for a competitive two-level pharmaceutical supply chain (PSC) comprising two pharma-manufacturers and one pharma-retailer. In the investigated PSC, the pharma-manufacturers competitively invest in the CSR effort to produce a new medicine and sell two substitutable products to...

This paper is motivated by a real pharmaceutical supply chain (PSC) of Valsartan, facing two major concerns. First, implementing effective policies for product recall management due to disruption occurring in the manufacturing process, including impurity in raw material and packaging errors. Second, determining the optimal selling price and quality...

Previous studies in blood supply chain network design often follow a commonly used approach in protecting the chain against disruptions, considering the effects of disruptions on the designing phase. However, in many real-world situations, disruptions cannot be adequately measured in advance. Moreover, using disruptions in the designing phase throu...

With the increase of global warming, grain producers should consider emission reduction in their production activities to move towards sustainable development. Besides the challenges of environmental sustainability, grain producers in developing countries face budget constraints for promoting their sustainability level. Moreover, sustainability str...

The need for efficient blood supply is of more significance in the event of disasters, when there is a lack of coordination between distribution and inventory management. The recent earthquake in Kermanshah province in Iran is among such cases that confirmed the need for coordinating such schedules. In this respect, a two-stage stochastic programmi...

Due to its location on the world dry belt, Iran is known as a disaster-prone country. Regarding such a problem, planning for relief operations in disaster situations seems significant and undeniable. The literature on disaster management has mostly defined their problems in a single-level framework, ignoring the bi-level aspect of such problems in...

In this study, a contract for vertical and horizontal coordination is developed in which transportation mode and carbon emissions tax play a key role in determining the values of the contract parameters. The contract is designed for simultaneous coordination of cooperative advertising and periodic review replenishment decisions of a supplier and tw...

Based on the uncertain conditions such as uncertainty in blood demand and facility disruptions, and also, due to the uncertain nature of blood products such as perishable lifetime, distinct blood groups, and ABO-Rh(D) compatibility and priority rules among these groups, this paper aims to contribute blood supply chains under uncertainty. In this re...

This paper analytically explores drug recall programmes in the pharmaceutical industry by considering the product defect severity as a source of uncertainty. Under the Stackelberg game model, a pharma-manufacturer outsources the drug recall management and pays collecting fees to a third party logistics provider (3PL) for collecting the defective me...

Due to the interaction among different planning levels and various travel demands during a day, the transit network planning is of great importance. In this paper, a bi-objective multi-period planning model is proposed for the synchronization of timetabling and vehicle scheduling. The main aim of the problem is to minimize the weighted transfer wai...

This study contributes to the closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) literature by investigating: (a) a new function for supply of used products based on the service competition between two dealers and (b) manufacturer’s economic incentives to the dealers so as to persuade them to return the collected products. In order to achieve the optimal values of CL...

This study contributes to the literature on supply chain coordination by coordinating the research and development (R&D) effort, retail price, and inventory decisions. It investigates a real case in the home appliance industry. The main purpose of this study is to examine the optimal values of R&D effort, pricing, and inventory decisions under dece...

This study proposes a robust model for the inventory-routing problem in which a set of suppliers distribute some products to multiple customers facing uncertain demands over a finite time horizon. Customers' demand has not a specified probability distribution. The only knowledge about the demand of customers is that these uncertain parameters are r...

In reverse supply chains, acquisition price strategy provided by manufacturers plays an essential role in collecting used products. On the other hand, owing to the fact that the acquisition price contributes to the improvement of the environmental sustainability, it can influence the purchasing behaviors of eco-friendly customers. Thus, acquisition...

As a service-oriented supply chain, blood supply chain management deals with a human-to-human network involved with a number of direct challenges such as irregularity in both blood supply and demand as well as multiplicity of blood products, their respective lifetimes and perishability. Besides, facing risks originating from natural disasters or ma...

In addition to the great importance of minimizing total cost, resiliency and social indicators have a special place in the agricultural food supply chain. In this respect, a novel multi-objective model is developed that addresses the design/redesign wheat supply chain network, which comprises several suppliers, existing silos, candidate locations f...

In supply chain (SC) context, many SC members make sustainability effort not only to help the environment but also promote the market demand. Under such a situation, effective strategies should be adopted to coordinate the members’ sustainability decisions such as carbon emission reduction and green effort decisions. This article makes contribution...

Pricing and replenishment decisions are no longer internal issues within organizations and it is of high significance to coordinate such primary decisions from a supply chain (SC) perspective. In this study, for the first time, we develop a new method based on credit option to coordinate production , pricing, and periodic review policy decisions co...

Considering and analyzing various kinds of cooperation among supply chain members is an option for better managing each channel. It is noteworthy that in many real‐world cases, each of vertical and horizontal cooperation has an important role in the success of supply chains. Nevertheless, only vertical cooperation in most previous research is consi...

Unlike its inherent beneficial attributes, the blood supply chain is very complex due to its uncertain nature and irregular donation besides a high vulnerability to disruptions. In this regard, this study provides a multi‐objective integrated resilient‐efficient model to design a blood supply chain network under uncertainty. To evaluate the efficie...

Nowadays, competitive market creates the necessity of quality improvement at different levels of supply chains (SCs). This paper contributes to the SC coordination literature and proposes a bilateral wholesale price (BWP) contract for optimizing pricing and quality improvement decisions in different echelons of a cell phone SC. The SC comprises a m...

Background: The efficiency of health system services is a critical measure for societies development. During the last fifty years, the world has witnessed a massive increase in health expenditure, and health-related cost, especially in developing countries, is the main obstacle in the way of advance in health care systems. As a remarkable portion o...

With the growing consciousness of social sustainability, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a serious challenge to manufacturers. This paper analytically analyzes pricing strategy and long-term behavior of socially concerned manufacturers through a one-population evolutionary game theory. Considering two main strategies, i.e., non-CSR...

In the information age, demand disruptions are challenging for supply chain (SC) systems. This study explores a reverse supply chain (RSC) system dealing with demand disruptions in its online channel. The disruptions hurt the company's revenue since a fraction of the online channel demand will be lost. It is also important to determine the level of...

To improve the coordination of blood supply and demand, the efficient design of the blood supply chain network (BSCN) is a proper strategy. In this regard, this paper is the first-ever study to strive for a simultaneous investigation on three interdependent challenges of the BSCN: (1) donors motivation, (2) optimizing location and capacity decision...

In order to attain competitive advantage, it is of high importance for firms to move towards sustainability. In practice, an efficient sustainable closed-loop supply chain (SCLSC) can reduce the negative effects of hazardous wastes and consequently improve the environmental dimension of sustainability. Besides the environmental dimension, the socia...

Social price-sensitivity of demand is proposed for a two-echelon competitive supply chain (SC) comprising a monopolistic manufacturer and two duopolistic retailers. In the investigated SC, the manufacturer invests in corporate social responsibility (CSR) effort, and the retailers compete on selling price. This paper demonstrates the effect of the m...

نیاز مبرم و بی­پایان به خون انسان­ها به صورت کافی و ایمن از یک طرف و هزینه­های گزاف سیستم­های سلامت از طرفی دیگر، دولت­ها را بر آن داشته تا در جهت بهبود عملکرد سیستم­های سلامت گام بردارند. یکی از کلیدی­ترین بخش­های یک سیستم سلامت زنجیره تامین خون است که سهم قابل توجهی از هزینه­های این سیستم را به خود اختصاص داده است. بنابراین هرگونه پیشرفتی در عملک...

The proper supply of end-of-life (EOL) items plays a critical role in the success of remanufacturing systems. In many real-world practices, a remanufacturer has multiple links with independent third party collectors, while these links should be simultaneously coordinated. However, most previous studies mainly focus on reverse supply chain (RSC) coo...

In a decentralized supply chain (SC), each member individually makes decisions according to its personal objectives while these decisions impact on the other SC actors. The promotional effort made by retailers is one of the main factors that largely impacts on the market demand of a commodity, which in turn boosts the profitability of the whole SC...

Blood transfusion is a multi-step process with risks in each process from selecting donors to transfusing the patient. Meanwhile, the quality plays an essential part throughout the blood supply chain. In this regard, this study proposes a bi-objective model for an integrated blood supply chain network design. The first objective function tries to m...

Motivated by a real-life case study, this paper proposes a multilateral perspective for blood supply chain network design as an intricate decision-making problem. The proposed approach utilizes a novel multi-objective mathematical model by incorporating both quantitative and qualitative factors to comprehensively model the investigated case study....

Recently, significant research attention has been paid to supply chain (SC) coordination. However, previous studies assume that the market demand is deterministic or has a certain probability distribution. Taking a new approach, this paper analytically addresses the coordination of an SC under a scenario-based demand and proposes an adjustable bi-l...

Demand uncertainty coupled with the short lifespan of itemized platelets has caused a significant shortage at public therapeutic centers. In this regard, this paper presents a multi-objective robust stochastic mixed integer linear programming model for an integrated platelet supply chain considering unidirectional lateral transshipment between hosp...

The main aim of this paper is to synthesize CSR issue into channel coordination. Accordingly, the CSR issue is studied in a manufacturer-retailer chain under two cases: (1) the manufacturer invests in CSR, and (2) the retailer invests in CSR. Each case is explored in terms of the individual profitability of supply chain (SC) members and the amount...

In this paper, a socially responsible supply chain consisting of one supplier and one retailer is proposed. The supplier decides on replenishment cycle multiplier and the retailer invests in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and decides on the order-up-to-level under a periodic review replenishment policy. The retailer's decisions impact on the...

In this paper, an incentive contract is proposed to coordinate the environmental and social decisions in a manufacturer-duopolistic retailers green supply chain. The manufacturer invests in new technology to enhance the green level of the products and two retailers invest in the corporate social responsibility (CSR). The investigated supply chain i...

Drug has a great and crucial role in both the health systems and the quality of life, and therefore its shortage can cause great damages. In order to the important role of drugs, pharmaceutical supply chain (PSC) should ensure that drugs are delivered to people in the right time with the best quality. The supply chain (SC) members have a great depe...

In recent years, competition among enterprises has been significantly increased. Trade credit and promotional effort are two important tools that have been extensively used for increasing competitive advantage. In today's business environment, retailers compete each other on new factors such as the length of credit period offered to end customers....

In this paper, we explore the issue of coordination in a manufacturer-retailer supply chain where the manufacturer is socially responsible and invests in CSR activities. On the other hand, the retailer invests in promotional efforts and uses a periodic review order-up-to policy for replenishing items. First, the decentralized decision-making struct...

A bi-level credit period coordination scheme is proposed for a supplier-retailer supply chain with a periodic review replenishment policy and price-credit dependent demand. The credit period offered by the retailer to its customers is a promotional effort to induce customer demand and gain market share. We model the problem under decentralized, cen...

The green quality and warranty period of products are two major factors which affect consumers’ purchasing behavior. Recently, there has been growing research interests in green supply chain coordination. However, to the best of our knowledge, coordination of green quality and warranty decisions for substitutable products in a competitive supply ch...

This paper deals with the pollution-routing problem with simultaneous pickup and delivery, where the goal is to minimize fuel consumption and emissions by scheduling and routing customers. A nonlinear mix integer programing model is presented for this problem, and an adaptive large neighborhood search heuristic is proposed for the solution method i...

In this paper, coordination of a manufacturer-retailer chain is investigated where the manufacturer innovates in manufacturing process and the retailer applies promotional efforts. The market demand is assumed to be sto-chastic dependent on the retailer's promotional and the manufacturer's innovation efforts. The retailer uses a periodic review inv...

In this paper, the issue of cooperative (co-op) promotion efforts is addressed in a two-stage supply chain (SC). The investigated SC includes one monopolistic manufacturer and two duopolistic retailers facing different market demands. The customers’ demand is affected by both advertising efforts of the manufacturer and two retailers. Moreover, the...

Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is addressed to a class of problems for determining a set of vehicle routes, in which each vehicle departs from a given depot, serves a given set of customers, and returns back to the same depot. On the other hand, simultaneous delivery and pickup problems have drawn much attention in the past few years due to its high...

Compared to center-based hemodialysis (HD), peritoneal dialysis (PD) has many advantages among which cost effectiveness and comfort of patients are the most important ones. On the other hand the number of PD patients is so small and even decreasing worldwide due to difficulties of this mode of dialysis. Therefore to encourage dialysis patients to c...

Drug shortage compromises patient safety and increases the vulnerability of the overall healthcare system. Improving patient service level in the pharmaceutical industry context is a major endeavor towards a socially responsible supply chain. However, service levels are difficult to achieve as the actors (i.e. distributors and retailers) within the...

This paper proposes a multi-objective mixed integer linear programming model for the design of an integrated blood supply chain network for disaster relief. The developed model accounts for all the special aspects of blood supply chains involving uncertain demand of blood products and their irregular supply, perishability of blood products and shor...

In this article, the manufacturer-retailer supply chain coordination (SCC) has been developed under periodic review inventory system. In the studied model, the retailer as downstream member uses periodic review inventory policy and decides about review period (T) and order-up-to-level (R). Also, the manufacturer as upstream member faces EPQ system...

In this paper, a coordination model has been investigated for a two-level supply chain (SC) consisting of one retailer and one supplier under periodic review inventory system. The review period and the retailer’s safety factor are assumed to be decision variables. The retailer faces stochastic demand following a normal distribution with known mean...

In this paper, we propose a fuzzy green vehicle routing problem with simultaneous pickup and delivery and time windows (F-GVRP-SPDTW), in which the amounts of fuel consumption and emission are estimated by a comprehensive modal emission model. A mixed integer nonlinear programming model is proposed to minimize the cost of fuel consumption and emiss...

The blood supply chain as a part of a healthcare system plays a substantial role in improving health within societies and supplying blood for daily needs. Specifically in disaster condition, blood supply is the challenge requiring more attention. This paper presents a fuzzy-stochastic mixed integer linear programming model to design blood supply ch...

In this study, a two phase hybrid heuristic approach was proposed to solve the multi-depot multi-vehicle inventory routing problem (MDMVIRP). Inventory routing problem (IRP) is one of the major issues in the supply chain networks that arise in the context of vendor managed systems (VMI) The MDMVIRP combines inventory management and routing decision...