A modified genetic algorithm for maximizing handling reliability and recyclability of distribution centers

• A modified genetic algorithm is developed to handle reliability and recycling ability.
• The algorithm aims at finding location, allocation, and routing solutions.
• New chromosome encoding enhances the searching ability for distribution centers.
• Numerical experiments demonstrate that Pareto solutions can be obtained.

Nowadays, many 3PL providers usually equip their distribution centers with different facilities, enabling them to be specialized in handling certain products types, and enhancing their ability of reuse and recycle the waste produced from packaging and repackaging. In practice, this problem type has been attracted much attention by researchers and environmental protectionisms. More importantly, because of the difference in product handling specialty, this induces different processing efficiency, handling reliability, and costs. In this connection, the objective of this paper is to propose a modified genetic algorithm to deal with the problem. The new chromosome encoding enhances the searching ability of the genetic algorithm in finding location, allocation, and routing solutions with high handling reliability and recycling ability for the distribution centers. To test the optimization reliability of the modified genetic algorithm, a number of numerical experiments have been carried out. The results demonstrated that the modified algorithm is able to obtain the Pareto solutions under multi-criterion decision making. Meanwhile, the handling reliability and recycling of the distributed centers are increased and the overall performance of the distribution network is improved.