Multi-objective design of an organ transplant network under uncertainty

•We propose a model for the organ transplant transportation network design.•We present a fuzzy multi-objective programming approach to solve the problem.•We present two meta-heuristics approaches to solve large problems.•We provide a real industrial case-study and analyze the results.

We propose a novel multi-period location–allocation model for the design of an organ transplant transportation network under uncertainty. The model consists of a bi-objective mathematical programming model that minimizes total cost and time, including waiting time in the queue for the transplant operation, while considering organs’ priorities. A fuzzy multi-objective programming based approach is presented to solve the small and medium size problems to optimality. For larger problems, we propose two meta-heuristics based algorithms. Lower bounds, and several numerical examples with managerial insights are discussed. A real case-study is provided, and the existing and the proposed optimal solutions are compared.