Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 around the globe in the last few years, the need for pharmaceutical supply chains is felt more than before. However, increasing uncertainties along with unpredictable demand for products led to disruptions in supply chains when receiving requests from retailers. These disruptions not only affected the economic aspect of supply chains but also caused shortages in hospitals and medical centers. Therefore, it has become significant for companies to select their suppliers to avoid disruptions in the case of the severity of infections. To address this issue in practice, this paper has been conducted based on a case study to address the role of lean, agile, resilience, and green (LARG) criteria in selecting the supplier in a pharmaceutical supply chain and compare the results obtained before and after the prevalence of COVID-19. The main purpose of this study is to determine and evaluate different indicators within the LARG concept to avoid disruptions when selecting suppliers. Besides, the significance of these criteria before and after the pandemic condition is addressed. Due to addressing multiple aspects of the problem, a hybrid fuzzy multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) approach is adopted for this elaboration when the four LARG criteria are integrated with eighteen supplier selection sub-criteria. To calculate the impact of each criterion (or sub-criteria), a fuzzy best–worst method (BWM) along with an additive ratio assessment (ARAS) is employed to propose a supplier ranking for a distributor of a pharmaceutical supply chain. The developed model is novel as LARG criteria in the context of supplier selection have not been studied to address the disruptions in the pharmaceutical supply chain. This is significant because it gives insight to both retailers and suppliers to emphasize the correct criteria, especially in the pandemic or related disrupting conditions. The results demonstrated that quality, collaboration, safety stock, and environmental criteria weigh the highest before the pandemic, while just-in-time delivery, lead time, safety stock, and environmental criteria weigh the highest after the pandemic. This study demonstrates that developing a supplier selection approach that meets the demand in a short time and recommends suppliers to hold surplus inventory helps the healthcare systems better respond to the market needs.

In the original publication of the article first author name has been misspelled as “Morteza Sheykhzadeh”. The correct name is “Morteza Sheykhizadeh”. The original article has been corrected.

The index-based approach is one of the most popular ways to measure the inherent safety degree of a chemical route or process during the early design stages. One of the main shortcomings of current indices is the limited set of aspects which are considered and are influencing inherent safety. In addition, the minimal knowledge of process designers regarding inherent safety hazards can exacerbate this problem. In this study, we identify the inherent safety indicators (within the period 1990–2017) used to measure the inherent safety degree of a process, and describe existing approaches to estimate these indicators. Bibliographic sites, including the Web of Science, ScienceDirect, Springer, ACS publications and Online Library, were searched based on various search strategies. A total of 62 resources were selected, and 35 indicators were found that were classified into six categories: (i) the ‘chemical and physical properties of a chemical substance (11 indicators); (ii) the ‘process conditions’ (5 indicators); (iii) the ‘equipment’ (5 indicators); (iv) the ‘reaction/decomposition properties’ (3 indicators); (v) the ‘activities and operations characteristics’ (4 indicators); and (vi) the ‘consequences’ (7 indicators). We also found six estimation approaches, including the relative rating, an advanced mathematical approach (statistical, numerical descriptive and fuzziness), the risk-based, graphical, equational (or formula) based approach and the hybrid approach. This study can provide a quick guide for non-experienced researchers being enthusiast to work on inherent safety measurements using an index-based approach.