Benefits of using ad-hoc inventory management models in the presence of return flows

Abstract

In this work we analyze the impact of reverse logistics in inventory management models through the analysis of implications and extensions of some literature models. Through experimentation with deterministic inventory models we found that in most cases, the traditional inventory management costs are higher than the models considering return flows. Only in few cases, mainly when the recoverable inventory holding cost was very high in relation to the serviceable inventory holding cost, the benefits of ad-hoc models was negligible. We also observe that there is no quantitative comparison in the literature between a traditional inventory management and one which considers return flows.