Track: Modeling and Simulation

Abstract

Determining the most suitable pharmaceutical warehouse locations for drug distribution, which is discussed in this study, is an important problem that needs to be addressed not only in the pandemic period but also in the pre-pandemic periods. The basis of drug distribution is to provide the necessary structure for health systems by providing drugs at the right time and in the right place. Therefore, proper execution of supply chain activities on behalf of this sector is a critical issue. Especially during the pandemic process, a complex structure has emerged for the optimization of the distribution process, with the inclusion of new implementations such as the distribution of COVID-19 drugs and vaccination. At this point, the problem of where the pharmaceutical warehouses should be located in order to ensure that drugs and vaccines can be delivered to the relevant places as soon as possible has gained importance. In this study, we handle the pharmacy warehouse location problem by considering the pandemic conditions and aim to determine the critical factors and their order of importance. For this purpose, after detailed literature research and interviews with experts are conducted, we determine the factors in the selection of the pharmacy warehouse location and determined the weights of these factors using multi-criteria decision-making analysis. Intuitionistic fuzzy sets are used to take into account the uncertainty in the decision process. As a result, the most important and the least important criteria for the location of the pharmacy warehouse during the pandemic process are determined.