Simple heuristics for push and pull remanufacturing policies

Inventory policies for joint remanufacturing and manufacturing have recently received much attention. Most efforts, though, were related to (optimal) policy structures and numerical optimization, rather than closed form expressions for calculating near optimal policy parameters. The focus of this paper is on the latter. We analyze an inventory system with unit product returns and demands where remanufacturing is the cheaper alternative for manufacturing. Manufacturing is also needed, however, since there are less returns than demands. The cost structure consists of setup costs, holding costs, and backorder costs. Manufacturing and remanufacturing orders have non-zero lead times. To control the system we use certain extensions of the familiar (s, Q) policy, called push and pull remanufacturing policies. For all policies we present simple, closed form formulae for approximating the optimal policy parameters under a cost minimization objective. In an extensive numerical study we show that the proposed formulae lead to near-optimal policy parameters

On the non-optimality of the average cost approach for inventory models with remanufacturing

A discussion on the non-optimality of the average cost approach for inventory models with remanufacturing was presented. In the development of discounted cash flow (DCF) model many costs such as manufacturing, remanufacturing, disposal, and holding costs were employed. The use of discount rate times, capital tied up in a product and the out of pocket holding cost rate for reverse logistics inventory models was also analyzed