Circular sustainable supply chain network design for electronic devices

This paper develops a circular closed-loop supply chain for electronic devices under epistemic data uncertainty using circular economy and industrial symbiosis concepts and principles. To this aim, candidate suppliers are first assessed based on a mixed fuzzy multi-attribute decision-making approach using sustainability and circularity criteria. Then, a multi-period, multi-objective mixed-integer possibilistic linear programming model is developed to jointly make several strategical and tactical decisions. The original possibilistic model is then converted to its crisp counterpart using the robust possibilistic programming approach. The proposed model is applied to the smartphone network in Iran as the case study. Several sensitivity analyses are also carried out whose results demonstrate the superiority of circular supply chain network model versus the linear model for electronic devices. Also, the collaboration of industrial players can notably affect the total profit and carbon emission, especially if they are located together in an eco-industrial park. The findings also reveal that incentive schemes can increase the number of returned products in the reverse flow and consequently make a rise in the circular supply chain's revenue.