Production planning and control of closed-loop supply chains

More and more supply chains emerge that include a return flow of materials. Many original equipment manufacturers are nowadays engaged in the remanufacturing business. In many process industries, production defectives and by-products are reworked. These closed-loop supply chains deserve special attention. Production planning and control in such hybrid systems is a real challenge, especially due to increased uncertainties. Even companies that are engaged in remanufacturing operations only, face more complicated planning situations than traditional manufacturing companies.We point out the main complicating characteristics in closed-loop systems with both remanufacturing and rework, and indicated the need for new or modified/extended production planning and control approaches. An overview of the existing scientific contributions is given. It appears that we only stand at the beginning of this line of research, and that many more contributions are needed and expected in the future.closed-loop supply chains;Production planning and control

Remanufacturing and product design: designing for the 7th generation

The following is taken directly from the research report. This report investigates Design for Remanufacture in terms of both detailed product design and the business context in which Design for Remanufacture may operate. Key Study Objectives • To understand the link between design and remanufacture • To understand how Design for Remanufacture can lead to increased innovation and Sustainable Development (SD) • To identify proactive strategies to further Design for Remanufactur

Production planning and control of closed-loop supply chains

More and more supply chains emerge that include a return flow of materials. Many original equipment manufacturers are nowadays engaged in the remanufacturing business. In many process industries, production defectives and by-products are reworked. These closed-loop supply chains deserve special attention. Production planning and control in such hybrid systems is a real challenge, especially due to increased uncertainties. Even companies that are engaged in remanufacturing operations only, face more complicated planning situations than traditional manufacturing companies. We point out the main complicating characteristics in closed-loop systems with both remanufacturing and rework, and indicated the need for new or modified/extended production planning and control approaches. An overview of the existing scientific contributions is given. It appears that we only stand at the beginning of this line of research, and that many more contributions are needed and expected in the future

Modularization in material flow simulation for managing production releases in remanufacturing

Remanufacturing is recognized as a major circular economy option to recover and upgrade functions from post-use products. However, the inefficiencies associated with operations, mainly due to the uncertainty and variability of material flows and product conditions, undermine the growth of remanufacturing. With the objective of supporting the design and management of more proficient and robust remanufacturing processes, this paper proposes a generic and reconfigurable simulation model of remanufacturing systems. The developed model relies upon a modular framework that enables the user to handle multiple process settings and production control policies, among which token-based policies. Customizable to the characteristics of the process under analysis, this model can support logistics performance evaluation of different production control policies, thus enabling the selection of the optimal policy in specific business contexts. The proposed model is applied to a real remanufacturing environment in order to validate and demonstrate its applicability and benefits in the industrial settings

Periodic Review, Push Inventory Policies for Remanufacturing

Sustainability has become a major issue in most economies, causing many leading companies to focus on product recovery and reverse logistics. This research is focused on product recovery, and in particular on production control and inventory management in the remanufacturing context. We study a remanufacturing facility that receives a stream of returned products according to a Poisson process. Demand is uncertain and also follows a Poisson process. The decision problems for the remanufacturing facility are when to release returned products to the remanufacturing line and how many new products to manufacture. We assume that remanufactured products are as good as new. In this paper, we employ a "push" policy that combines these two decisions. It is well known that the optimal policy parameters are difficult to find analytically; therefore, we develop several heuristics based on traditional inventory models. We also investigate the performance of the system as a function of return rates, backorder costs and manufacturing and remanufacturing lead times; and we develop approximate lower and upper bounds on the optimal solution. We illustrate and explain some counter-intuitive results and we test the performance of the heuristics on a set of sample problems. We find that the average error of the heuristics is quite low.inventory;reverse logistics;remanufacturing;environment;heuristics

Modular Product Architecture’s Decisions Support For Remanufacturing-Product Service System Synergy

Remanufacturing is identified as the most viable product end-of-life (EOL) management strategy. However, about 80% of manufactured products currently end up as wastes. Besides other benefits, the product service system (PSS) could curtail the main bottlenecks to remanufacturing namely quantity, quality, recovery time of used product, and negative perception of remanufactured products. Therefore, the integration of PSS and remanufacturing has been increasingly recommended as an enhanced product offering. However, an integration that is informed by mathematical analysis is missing. Meanwhile, the variables that bolster the performance of PSS and remanufacturing are substantially influenced by product development (PD) decisions. Among the PD strategies, modular architecture is a technique that significantly enhances product lifecycle management. Consequently, modular design is a suitable PD approach for an enhanced PSS-remanufacturing enterprise. Furthermore, it is argued that the PSS-remanufacturing initiative is poised to be a sustainable venture due to the sustainability philosophy of PSS. However, the acclaimed sustainability of PSS is flawed if a high environmental impact is associated with the production of the parts that constitute the product which is offered in PSS. Therefore, it is essential to consider the environmental implications of the production of the parts that are contained in the product architecture during PD. This research identifies that cost, core-cleaning, and product serviceability are critical variables for the success of remanufacturing and PSS. The research employs pairwise assessment methodology to evaluate the compatibility of module pairs comprehensively and obtains the modular pair compatibility indices via fuzzy system. Similarly, cost data are obtained. The study develops an optimization model that determines viable modular configuration(s) from among several alternatives in order to realize an enhanced PSS-remanufacturing business. Furthermore, the research performs lifecycle assessment (LCA) of module variants and determine the modular architecture with minimal environmental Impact. Having obtained the optimal architectures with regard to cost, core cleaning, product serviceability and environmental impacts, multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT) is engaged to collectively assess the degree of sustainability of the product architectures. The study offers analytical-based guidance to the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in making product architecture decisions in order to realize the sustainable PSS-remanufacturing enterprise

Evaluation of remanufacturing as a production alternative to reduce the magnitude of environmental impacts using TRACI

As a result of many environmental problems associated with industrial activities and manufacturing applications, several production strategies have been evaluated to reduce the magnitude of ecological impacts. Through remanufacturing, the physical form of the product is retained along with its economic value, offering a viable option to address actual ecological problems that result from production practices. One of the instruments used to evaluate process performance and product generation is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). However, to date, all software packages used to conduct LCA have failed to incorporate remanufacturing as a production alternative. The EPA\u27s TRACI software package utilized in this research describes the product lifecycle in only four stages: raw materials acquisition, manufacturing, use/reuse/maintenance, and recycle/waste management. An evaluation is performed to assess the potential benefits and liabilities of incorporating the remanufacturing cycle into the production system and evaluating the importance of doing so over a range of potentially remanufacturable products. Furthermore, a case study is conducted to demonstrate that remanufacturing may represent a useful strategy for reducing the magnitude of environmental impacts related to the production of durable manufactured products. The study found that remanufacturing can reduce the amount of contributors and environmental stressors that may lead to ecological impacts. The ecological categories- 1) ozone depletion, 2) acidification, 3)ecotoxicity, 4)eutrophication, 5) global warming, 6) human health cancer, 7) human health non-cancer, 8) human health criteria, 9) photochemical smog, 10) fossil fuel use and 11) water use- evaluated by the software tool constitute the conclusion parameters to determine whether or not remanufacturing accounts for sustainability. LCA results show benefits in nine of the categories analyzed, suggesting that remanufacturing comprises a superior choice in environmental terms