A FUZZY AHP APPROACH FOR EVALUATING REVERSE LOGISTICS INDICATORS IN BRAZIL

Abstract

Due to the raising of environmental consciousness in the last recent years, companies are increasingly concerned with Reverse Logistics (RL) activities. Despite the growing relevance, RL remains not adequately managed or assessed when compared to direct logistics processes. For instance, managers face difficulties to select the most appropriate RL key performance indicators (KPI) in spite of its great amount available in the literature. This paper contributes to close this gap by exploring RL performance indicators in theory and practice. Thus, this work brings to light the most relevant RL performance indicators in order to support decision makers to effectively attain to their purposes in reverse flow of end-of-life products. To this end, a three-step methodology was applied. Firstly, a systematic literature review on RL indicators was carried out. The most frequently cited indicators were selected and categorized into pre-defined domains. Secondly, a questionnaire was submitted to academic experts and industrial managers from Southern Brazil in order to obtain the relevance of indicators by means of pair-wise comparison matrices. Finally, a data analysis was undertaken and the indicators were ranked using fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (Fuzzy AHP). The fuzzy approach was elected to deal with incomplete information and vagueness of responses. This work may help companies to select performance indicators for a better implementation and management of RL. The preliminary results of the work show that KPI’s strongly associated to the economic area still represent a crucial issue when assessing RL processes. At last, the paper concludes by discussing further insights on RL as well as by suggesting future paths of research on this topic.