A Multi-Objective Multi-Type Facility Location Problem for the Delivery of Personalised Medicine

Advances in personalised medicine targeting specific sub-populations and individuals pose a challenge to the traditional pharmaceutical industry. With a higher level of personalisation, an already critical supply chain is facing additional demands added by the very sensitive nature of its products. Nevertheless, studies concerned with the efficient development and delivery of these products are scarce. Thus, this paper presents the case of personalised medicine and the challenges imposed by its mass delivery. We propose a multi-objective mathematical model for the location-allocation problem with two interdependent facility types in the case of personalised medicine products. We show its practical application through a cell and gene therapy case study. A multi-objective genetic algorithm with a novel population initialisation procedure is used as solution method.