Design and Optimization of Product Reuse Economics in Multi Echelon Closed Loop Supply Chain

Abstract

Systematic disposal of discarded products or by-products is an urgent issue that points to social, economic, and environmental problems. In some countries, the introduced legislation encourages remanufacturing as the responsibility of the OEM, and many of them have proactively taken measures to contribute their best. Usually, these discarded products can be end-of-use or end-of-life products, which are either burnt in the kiln (in the case of by-products) or disposed of in the landfills. This wastage ultimately destroys the valuable product, while their reuse is possible. Therefore, this study proposes some opinions to regenerate the remaining values from these discarded products. Moreover, the aim of this research work is to study the impact of the cost associated with logistics based models. newlineThe presented study mainly focuses on the integrated network, often called the closed-loop supply chain. The manufactured product moves from the manufacturer to the consumer in the forward flow of the supply chain. In contrast, important decisions or actions are to be taken regarding the reuse of discarded products by the consumer in the reverse flow. When the system is integrated, the designed network entirely depends on the return from the end-users, and therefore, profit largely depends on the amount of return. In addition to this, the appropriate number of facilities are required to manage this bulk return. A wrong decision may significantly increase the overall cost of the supply chain. Hence, the presented work utilizes the facility location-allocation approach to deal with these issues. This approach is efficient because it uses the lowest fixed cost while locating the optimal number of facilities and allocating optimal quantities among these facilities. newline