Development of Sustainable Recycling Investment Framework Considering Uncertain Demand and Nonlinear Recycling Cost

Hyunsoo Lee

doi:10.3390/su11143891

Abstract

This paper presents a more active and efficient recycling investment strategy that considers the balances among the current production constraints, manufacturing profits, and recycling investments for a sustainable circular economy as compared to the current methods. While existing production planning has numerous uncertainties and nonlinear characteristics, the circular economy-based production planning constitutes more complex uncertainties and nonlinear characteristics that result from an uncertain return rate, demand uncertainties, and nonlinear return on investment costs. This paper suggests a stochastic nonlinear programming model-based active recycling investment framework so as to generate a more effective process plan to handle these characteristics. In the proposed framework, recycling investment strategies are quantitatively analyzed when considering uncertain demand and unclear production conditions. In addition, the effective solving techniques for the circular economy based production framework are obtained while using Monte-Carlo based sample average approximation and memetic algorithm. To prove the effectiveness of the proposed framework, it is implemented for a given system and the numerical analyses that were conducted for the various sustainable manufacturing scenarios.

Highlights

The circular economy among the leading contemporary economy trends considers the environmental issues and sustainability of the business
In order to solve the circular economy-based process planning including the assertion of gathering investments for refurbished modules, this paper provides an integrated stochastic programming framework while using Monte-Carlo’s sample average approximation and the memetic algorithm
The circular economy is among the representative trends leading contemporary society

Summary

Introduction

The circular economy among the leading contemporary economy trends considers the environmental issues and sustainability of the business. While many research studies have provided several effective remanufacturing/refurbishing processes and techniques, most of these studies have been limited in the domain of plants and the factory planning level This shows that more expanded agendas (e.g., the investments and strategies for gathering recycling components) have been studied less comparatively. While the existing strategies (e.g., additional installment of collecting facilities, special promotion for the gatherings or recycling exchange compensation) may boost the collection of more recycling components, excessive investments might harm the corporate or business profits This paper considers both the collection strategies and current production constraints in tandem with the proposed integrated framework. In order to solve the circular economy-based process planning including the assertion of gathering investments for refurbished modules, this paper provides an integrated stochastic programming framework while using Monte-Carlo’s sample average approximation and the memetic algorithm.

Background and Literature Review

Development of Remanufacturing Framework and Its Numerical Analysis

Conclusions and Further Studies