One of the challenges facing supply chain designers is designing a sustainable and resilient supply chain network. The present study considers a closed-loop supply chain by taking into account sustainability, resilience, robustness, and risk aversion for the first time. The study suggests a two-stage mixed-integer linear programming model for the problem. Further, the robust counterpart model is used to handle uncertainties. Furthermore, conditional value at risk criterion in the model is considered in order to create real-life conditions. The sustainability goals addressed in the present study include minimizing the costs, $ \text{CO}_2 $ emission, and energy, along with maximizing employment. In addition, effective environmental and social life-cycle evaluations are provided to assess the associated effects of the model on society, environment, and energy consumption. The model aims to answer the questions regarding the establishment of facilities and amount of transported goods between facilities. The model is implemented in a car assembler company in Iran. Based on the results, several managerial insights are offered to the decision-makers. Due to the complexity of the problem, a constraint relaxation is applied to produce quality upper and lower bounds in medium and large-scale models. Moreover, the LP-Metric method is used to merge the objectives to attain an optimal solution. The results revealed that the robust counterpart provides a better estimation of the total cost, pollution, energy consumption, and employment level compared to the basic model.

Excessive population growth and high water demands have significantly increased water extractions from deep and semi-deep wells in the arid regions of Iran. This has negatively affected water quality in different areas. The Water Quality Index (WQI) is a suitable tool to assess such impacts. This study used WQI and the fuzzy hierarchical analysis process of the water quality index (FAHP-WQI) to investigate the water quality status of 96 deep agricultural wells in the Yazd-Ardakan Plain, Iran. Calculating the WQI is time-consuming, but estimating WQI is inevitable for water resources management. For this purpose, three Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, namely, Gene Expression Programming (GEP), M5P Model tree, and Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS), were employed to predict WQI. Using Wilcox and Schoeller charts, water quality was also investigated for agricultural and drinking purposes. The results demonstrated that 75% and 33% of the study area have good quality, based on the WQI and FAHP-WQI methods, respectively. According to the results of the Wilcox chart, around 37.25% of the wells are in the C3S2 and C3S1 classes, which indicate poor water quality. Schoeller’s diagram placed the drinking water quality of the Yazd-Ardakan plain in acceptable, inadequate, and inappropriate categories. Afterwards, WQI, predicted by means of ML models, were compared on several statistical criteria. Finally, the comparative analysis revealed that MARS is slightly more accurate than the M5P model for estimating WQI.

Nowadays, organisations try to find a proper method to increase their competitiveness. Lean, resilient, and sustainable are top-hole managerial practices in supply chain management. This paper tries to study the effects of integrating lean, resilient, and sustainable practices in the supply chain network (SCN). To this end, a new multi-objective mixed-integer programming is developed in such a way that lean manufacturing is implemented in a resilient-sustainable SCN. The objective functions try to maximise job opportunities and minimise costs, environmental effects, and delivery time. Resilience has been taken into account to tackle the lack of raw materials during disruptions by implementing multiple sourcing in the model. Besides, to devote more attention to sustainable practices, backup suppliers have been prioritised based on sustainability criteria. The academics were enquired to rate sustainability criteria for selecting a backup supplier. Finally, a fuzzy TOPSIS method was used to rank the backup suppliers based on sustainability criteria. The improved version of augmented ϵ-constraint (AUGMECON2) was applied to cope with multi-objectivity of the problem. The results indicated a synergistic effect among leanness, resilience, and sustainability in the supply chain. Also, it turned out that sustainable backup supplier selection boosts the synergistic effect among these three concepts.