Facility location, inventory control, and vehicle routes scheduling are critical and highly related problems in the design of logistics system for e‐business. Meanwhile, the return ratio in Internet sales was significantly higher than in the traditional business. Many of returned merchandise have no quality defects, which can reenter sales channels just after a simple repackaging process. Focusing on the existing problem in e‐commerce logistics system, we formulate a location‐inventory‐routing problem model with no quality defects returns. To solve this NP‐hard problem, an effective hybrid genetic simulated annealing algorithm (HGSAA) is proposed. Results of numerical examples show that HGSAA outperforms GA on computing time, optimal solution, and computing stability. The proposed model is very useful to help managers make the right decisions under e‐supply chain environment.

Third-party logistics (3PL) is a fast growing business. Many large organisations are using 3PL services to reduce operating costs, simplify business processes, and enhance operations and supply chain flexibility. In this paper, we study location-inventory decisions jointly in a closed-loop system with 3PL. First, a model formulation is proposed to develop mixed-integer non-linear programming (MINLP) models for the location-inventory problem under study. Then, a novel heuristics based on differential evolution and the genetic algorithm is designed to solve the MINLP models efficiently. Last, numerical study is presented to illustrate and validate the solution approach.

Both the suddenness and seriousness of COVID-19 have caused a variety of public opinions on social media, which becomes the focus of social attention. This paper aims to analyze the strategies regarding the prevention and guidance of public opinion spread under COVID-19 in social networks from the perspective of the emotional characteristics of user texts. Firstly, a model is established to mine text-based emotional tendency based on the Susceptible-Infectious-Susceptible (SIS) model. In addition, a mathematical and simulation analysis of the model is presented. Finally, an empirical study based on the data of microblog contents regarding COVID-19 public opinion in the Sina Weibo platform from January to March 2020 is conducted to analyze the factors that boost and hinder COVID-19 public opinion. The results show that when positive emotion is higher than 0.8, the spread of negative public opinion can be blocked. When the negative emotion and neutral emotion are both below 0.2, the spread of COVID-19 public opinion would be weakened. To accurately guide public opinion on COVID-19, the government authorities should establish a public opinion risk evaluation and an early warning mechanism. Platforms should strengthen public opinion supervision and users should improve their media literacy. The media organizations should insist on positive reporting, improve social cohesion, and guide the trend of public opinion.

Facility location, inventory management, and vehicle routing are three important decisions in supply chain management, and location‐inventory‐routing problems consider them jointly to improve the performance and efficiency of today’s supply chain networks. In this paper, we study a location‐inventory‐routing problem to minimize the total cost in a closed‐loop supply chain that has forward and reverse logistics flows. First, we formulate this problem as a nonlinear integer programming model to optimize facility location, inventory control, and vehicle routing decisions simultaneously in such a system. Second, we develop a novel heuristic approach that incorporates simulated annealing into adaptive genetic algorithm to solve the model efficiently. Last, numerical analysis is presented to validate our solution approach, and it also provides meaningful managerial insight into how to improve the closed‐loop supply chain under study.

To design sustainable supply chain systems in today’s business environment, this paper studies a location-inventory problem in a closed-loop supply chain by considering the sales of new and used products in the primary and secondary markets, respectively. This problem is formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear program to optimize facility location and inventory management decisions jointly, and the logistics flows between the two markets are modeled dynamically. To solve this problem efficiently, a new heuristic approach is also developed by introducing an effective adaptive mechanism into differential evolution. Finally, numerical experiments are presented to validate the solution approach and provide valuable managerial insight. This paper makes a meaningful contribution to the literature by incorporating the secondary market into the study of closed-loop supply chains, and practically, it is also greatly beneficial to improve the sustainability and efficiency of modern supply chains.

Commercial product returns represent a growing financial and operational concern for many firms, and they consist of true and false failure returns in the real-world business. This paper studies a joint location-inventory problem in a closed-loop system by considering multi-commodity flows and commercial product returns. First, this problem is formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model. Next, a novel heuristic method based on differential evolution is designed to solve this model efficiently. Finally, numerical experiments and results are presented to validate the solution approach and provide meaningful managerial insights for business managers to improve their supply chain practice in a closed-loop system with false failure returns.