Metaheuristic optimizers to solve multi-echelon sustainable fresh seafood supply chain network design problem: A case of shrimp products

Abstract

Seafood products are sought-after among communities all over the globe and are the main sources of essential nutrition for humans. Recently, the seafood supply chain networks have encountered obstacles that new sustainability regulations and the pandemic have brought forward. In this study, a novel supply chain network is developed for fresh seafood, considering sustainability aspects, to ideally balance the financial aspect of the network while enhancing the recycling of waste products. Moreover, four metaheuristics are employed to conquer the computational complexity of exact solution methods. To evaluate the performance of the algorithms in addressing the complexity of the proposed seafood supply chain model, some numerical examples in three different scales are designed. The obtained results from metaheuristic optimizers are assessed based on five effective measures. To facilitate the statistical analysis process, each measure is normalized using the relative deviation index indicator. According to the results obtained from the implementation of metaheuristic algorithms, it can be concluded that the multi-objective grey wolf and multi-objective golden eagle optimizers outperform the other two solution methods in terms of quality of solutions. Therefore, they can be applied efficiently in solving real-world seafood supply chain network problems.