Designing a sustainable dental tourism supply chain considering waste treatment

Today, dental tourism is regarded as one of the most important tourist industries due to its high demand and financial transactions. Sustainable development has become increasingly important because of the depletion of natural resources, health problems, and waste management. Contrary to the previous works, we firstly develop a multi-objective mathematical model seeking to reach and optimize sustainable objectives in the dental tourism supply chain. To achieve these aims, optimal locations of dental clinics and accommodation facilities and their required number and capacities are found. Besides, transportation activities and waste treatment facilities are optimized based on supply and demand. Biological risks, job vacancies creation, environmental issues, and costs and profits are considered in our work. Also, an improved goal programming is employed to solve the model. In addition, this model is implemented and analyzed by a real case study of the dental tourist industry to validate the proposed model. The government and practitioners of private sectors would derive great benefits from the real case outputs to build a thriving business from sustainable perspectives.