Abstract
Sensors are commonly employed to monitor products during their life cycles and to remotely and continuously track their usage patterns. Installing sensors into products can help generate useful data related to the conditions of products and their components, and this information can subsequently be used to inform EOL decision-making. As such, embedded sensors can enhance the performance of EOL product processing operations. The information collected by the sensors can also be used to estimate and predict product failures, thereby helping to improve maintenance operations. This paper describes a study in which system maintenance and EOL processes were combined and closed-loop supply chain systems were constructed to analyze the financial contribution that sensors can make to these procedures by using discrete event simulation to model and compare regular systems and sensor-embedded systems. The factors that had an impact on the performance measures, such as disassembly cost, maintenance cost, inspection cost, sales revenues, and profitability, were determined and a design of experiments study was carried out. The experiment results were compared, and pairwise t-tests were executed. The results reveal that sensor-embedded systems are significantly superior to regular systems in terms of the identified performance measures.
Highlights
Constructing and sustaining efficient closed-loop supply chain systems has become extremely important for organizations because technology advances very quickly and the manufacturing business is highly competitive
This paper presents a model for a closed-loop supply chain study that included maintenance operations and EOL product processing
The results revealed that embedding sensors into laptops can significantly improve the performance of closed-loop supply chain systems that are constructed for laptops
Summary
Constructing and sustaining efficient closed-loop supply chain systems has become extremely important for organizations because technology advances very quickly and the manufacturing business is highly competitive. Consumers’ increasing environmental awareness and the introduction of legislation that governs the management of EOL products has forced firms to increase the amount of EOL products that are recovered and reprocessed as part of a closed-loop supply chain. While these activities come at a cost, they are a source of additional revenue if they are managed efficiently. Closed-loop supply chains take into consideration the use phase of products, as well as their reprocessing potential once they complete their life cycles. Maintenance is one prominent activity that takes place during the use phase of products. The use of embedded sensors in products during their use phases was modeled and tested
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