Decision makings in key remanufacturing activities to optimise remanufacturing outcomes : a review

The importance of remanufacturing has been increasing since stricter regulations on protecting the environment were enforced. Remanufacturing is considered as the main means of retaining value from used products and components in order to drive a circular economy. However, it is more complex than traditional manufacturing due to the uncertainties associated with the quality, quantities and return timing of used products and components. Over the past few years, various methods of optimising remanufacturing outcomes have been developed to make decisions such as identifying the best End-Of-Life (EOL) options, acquiring the right amounts of cores, deciding the most suitable disassembly level, applying suitable cleaning techniques, and considering product commonality across different product families. A decision being made at one remanufacturing activity will greatly affect the decisions at subsequent activities, which will affect remanufacturing outcomes, i.e. productivity, economic performance effectiveness, and the proportion of core that can be salvaged. Therefore, a holistic way of integrating different decisions over multiple remanufacturing activities is needed to improve remanufacturing outcomes, which is a major knowledge gap. This paper reviews current remanufacturing practice in order to highlight both the challenges and opportunities, and more importantly, offers useful insights on how such a knowledge gap can be bridged

A Review of Structural Relationships in Closed-Loop Supply Chain Model

The acquisition strategy of returned products has become essential in the study of reverse supply chain.  There are three primary activities included in the process of a the reverse supply chain, the acquisition of returned products, the remanufacturing process, and redistribution. This literature review intends to study the existing relationship amongst supply chain players in a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) model. In the remanufacturing process performed by the company, returned products must be collected from consumers. Therefore, remanufacturing companies rely upon consumers as cores suppliers. This makes the good relationship between the two become  crucial in company operational sustainability successfully.  In this study, the identified journal articles were categorized into types of structural relationships between supply chain players and network structures of a reverse supply chain. Types of structural relationships are ownership-based, service-contract, direct-order, deposit-based, credit-based, buy-back, and voluntary–based. There are four types of returned product collector and remanufacturer: Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), a third party (3PL), retailer, and remanufacturer. Discussion of the journal articles was presented in each category. After that, the structural relationship was explored to find its advantage and disadvantage, so that CLSC can be managed effectively and efficiently. As a summary, suggestions for future research were described as the result of the literature review conducted

Building Resilience in Closed-Loop Supply Chains through Information-Sharing Mechanisms

In this paper we reflect on the role of information sharing on increasing the resilience of supply chains. Specifically, we highlight the lack of studies addressing this relevant topic in closed-loop supply chains. Then, we introduce the works covered by the Special Issue “Information Sharing on Sustainable and Resilient Supply Chains” to investigate the relationships between information sharing and resilience in sustainable supply chains.Universidad de Sevilla V PPIT-USDICAR-UniCT (Dpto. Ing. Civil y Arqu. Univ. Catania) Plan de investigación Departamental 2016-201

Modeling a Remanufacturing Reverse Logistics Planning Problem: Some Insights into Disruptive Technology Adoption

Remanufacturing is the process to restore the functionality of high-value end-of-life (EOL) products, which is considered a substantial link in reverse logistics systems for value recovery. However, due to the uncertainty of the reverse material fow, the planning of a remanufacturing reverse logistics system is complex. Furthermore, the increasing adoption of disruptive technologies in Industry 4.0/5.0, e.g., the Internet of things (IoT), smart robots, cloud-based digital twins, and additive manufacturing, has shown great potential for a smart paradigm transition of remanufacturing reverse logistics operations. In this paper, a new mixed-integer program is modeled for supporting several tactical decisions in remanufacturing reverse logistics, i.e., remanufacturing setups, production planning and inventory levels, core acquisition and transportation, and remanufacturing line balancing and utilization. The model is further extended by incorporating utilization-dependent nonlinear idle time cost constraints and stochastic takt time to accommodate diferent real-world scenarios. Through a set of numerical experiments, the infuences of diferent demand patterns and idle time constraints are revealed. The potential impacts of disruptive technology adoption in remanufacturing reverse logistics are also discussed from managerial perspectives, which may help remanufacturing companies with a smart and smooth transition in the Industry 4.0/5.0 era

Applying Revenue Management to the Reverse Supply Chain

We study the disposition decision for product returns in a closed-loop supply chain. Motivated by the asset recovery process at IBM, we consider two disposition alternatives. Returns may be either refurbished for reselling or dismantled for spare parts. Reselling a refurbished unit typically yields higher unit margins. However, demand is uncertain. A common policy in many firms is to rank disposition alternatives by unit margins. We show that a revenue management approach to the disposition decision which explicitly incorporates demand uncertainty can increase profits significantly. We discuss analogies between the disposition problem and the classical airline revenue management problem. We then develop single period and multi-period stochastic optimization models for the disposition problem. Analyzing these models, we show that the optimal allocation balances expected marginal profits across the disposition alternatives. A detailed numerical study reveals that a revenue management approach to the disposition problem significantly outperforms the current practice of focusing exclusively on high-margin options, and we identify conditions under which this improvement is the highest. We also show that the value recovered from the returned products critically depends on the coordination between forward and reverse supply chain decisions.remanufacturing;revenue management;onderdelen;revenues;spare parts inventory