Environmental sustainability EOQ model for closed-loop supply chain under market uncertainty: A case study of printer remanufacturing

Abstract

The traditional economic order quantity (EOQ) model determines the optimal ordering strategy based on the premise that the market demand is constant, which leads to obvious deviations under uncertain circumstances. This work relaxes the limitations of the classical EOQ model and extends the application to closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) systems. First, through stochastic analysis, this revised model quantifies the impacts of market uncertainty on remanufacturing and operations processes. Then, by converting all the production indexes into carbon equivalent emissions, it conducts a comparative analysis of environmental efficiency under different acquisition scenarios. More importantly, based on the quantitative relationship between market uncertainty and production indexes, we devise an optimal ordering strategy for the maximization of environmental benefits under an arbitrary distribution of demand from the perspective of the entire CLSC. Finally, validated by numerical experiments and grounded with the data of printer remanufacturing, we demonstrate that the extended EOQ method can greatly reduce carbon equivalent emissions and improve environmental efficiency. This work provides a theoretical foundation for remanufacturers to formulate optimal ordering strategies under market uncertainty conditions while being more environmentally efficient without significantly increasing production input.