The boomerang returns? Accounting for the impact of uncertainties on the dynamics of remanufacturing systems

Recent years have witnessed companies abandon traditional open-loop supply chain structures in favour of closed-loop variants, in a bid to mitigate environmental impacts and exploit economic opportunities. Central to the closed-loop paradigm is remanufacturing: the restoration of used products to useful life. While this operational model has huge potential to extend product life-cycles, the collection and recovery processes diminish the effectiveness of existing control mechanisms for open-loop systems. We systematically review the literature in the field of closed-loop supply chain dynamics, which explores the time-varying interactions of material and information flows in the different elements of remanufacturing supply chains. We supplement this with further reviews of what we call the three ‘pillars’ of such systems, i.e. forecasting, collection, and inventory and production control. This provides us with an interdisciplinary lens to investigate how a ‘boomerang’ effect (i.e. sale, consumption, and return processes) impacts on the behaviour of the closed-loop system and to understand how it can be controlled. To facilitate this, we contrast closed-loop supply chain dynamics research to the well-developed research in each pillar; explore how different disciplines have accommodated the supply, process, demand, and control uncertainties; and provide insights for future research on the dynamics of remanufacturing systems

The extension and exploitation of the inventory and order based production control system archetype from 1982 to 2015

In 1994, through classic control theory, John, Naim and Towill developed the ‘Automatic Pipeline, Inventory and Order-based Production Control System’ (APIOBPCS) which extended the original IOBPCS archetype developed by Towill in 1982 ─ well-recognised as a base framework for a production planning and control system. Due to the prevalence of the two original models in the last three decades in the academic and industrial communities, this paper aims to systematically review how the IOBPCS archetypes have been adopted, exploited and adapted to study the dynamics of individual production planning and control systems and whole supply chains. Using various databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar (111 papers), we found that the IOBPCS archetypes have been studied regarding the a) modification of four inherent policies related to forecasting, inventory, lead-time and pipeline to create a ‘family’ of models, b) adoption of the IOBPCS ‘family’ to reduce supply chain dynamics, and in particular bullwhip, c) extension of the IOBPCS family to represent different supply chain scenarios such as order-book based production control and closed-loop processes. Simulation is the most popular method adopted by researchers and the number of works based on discrete time based methods is greater than those utilising continuous time approaches. Most studies are conceptual with limited practical applications described. Future research needs to focus on cost, flexibility and sustainability in the context of supply chain dynamics and, although there are a few existing studies, more analytical approaches are required to gain robust insights into the influence of nonlinear elements on supply chain behaviour. Also, empirical exploitation of the existing models is recommended

Bullwhip Effect of a Closed Leep Supply Chain with and Without Information Sharing of Customer Demand

In recent years, companies have become interested in a closed-loop supply chain that is concerned with the recovery pipeline. The expenses of a company can be influenced by large inventories and backlogs due to the bullwhip effect in the supply chain. Previous literature has shown that the bullwhip effect can be decreased by a reverse supply chain. This paper develops a closed-loop supply chain including seven echelons for recovery of end-of-life products. The model considers the order-up-to inventory policy and the exponential smoothing forecasting with a trend method in the system to assist in determining the ordering quantities. The best of the best is the method for this paper to choose a good smoothing parameter and to compare the necessity for information sharing. This test method provides the minimizing cost for the companies and analyzes the type of costs that can be reduced by selecting a good parameter value or utilizing information sharing. Furthermore, it also provides a way to reduce the bullwhip effect and verifies that the bullwhip index and cost are a complement to each other

Sustainable supply chain management towards disruption and organizational ambidexterity:A data driven analysis

Balancing sustainability and disruption of supply chains requires organizational ambidexterity. Sustainable supply chains prioritize efficiency and economies of scale and may not have sufficient redundancy to withstand disruptive events. There is a developing body of literature that attempts to reconcile these two aspects. This study gives a data-driven literature review of sustainable supply chain management trends toward ambidexterity and disruption. The critical review reveals temporal trends and geographic distribution of literature. A hybrid of data-driven analysis approach based on content and bibliometric analyses, fuzzy Delphi method, entropy weight method, and fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory is used on 273 keywords and 22 indicators obtained based on the experts’ evaluation. The most important indicators are identified as supply chain agility, supply chain coordination, supply chain finance, supply chain flexibility, supply chain resilience, and sustainability. The regions show different tendencies compared with others. Asia and Oceania, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Africa are the regions needs improvement, while Europe and North America show distinct apprehensions on supply chain network design. The main contribution of this review is the identification of the knowledge frontier, which then leads to a discussion of prospects for future studies and practical industry implementation

The extension and exploitation of the inventory and order based production control system archetype from 1982-2015

In 1994, through classic control theory, John, Naim and Towill developed the ‘Automatic Pipeline, Inventory and Order-based Production Control System’ (APIOBPCS), which extended the original IOBPCS archetype (Towill 1982) ─ a well-recognized as a base framework for a production planning and control system. Due to the prevalence of two original models in the last three decades from academic and industrial communities, this paper aims to systematically review how the IOBPCS archetypes has been adopted, exploited and adapted to study the dynamics of individual production planning and control systems and whole supply chains. Using Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, we found that the IOBPCS archetypes has been studied regarding the a) modification of four inherent policies related to forecasting, inventory, lead-time and pipeline to create a ‘family’ of models, b) adoption of the IOBPCS ‘family’ to reduce supply chain dynamics, and in particular bullwhip, c) extension of the IOBPCS family to represent different supply chain scenarios such as order-book based production control and closed-loop processes. Simulation is the most popular method adopted by researchers and the number of works based on discrete time based methods is greater than those utilizing continuous time approaches. Most studies are conceptual with limited practical applications described. Future research needs to focus on cost, flexibility and sustainability in the context of supply chain dynamics and, although there are a few existing studies, more analytical approaches are required to gain robust insights into the influence of nonlinear elements on supply chain behaviour