Abstract
This paper deals with the optimization of a manufacturing–remanufacturing–transport–warehousing closed-loop supply chain, which is composed of two machines for manufacturing and remanufacturing, manufacturing stock, purchasing warehouse, transport vehicle and recovery inventory. The proposed system takes into account the return of used end-of-life products from the market. Manufactured and re-manufactured products are stored in the manufacturing stock. The used end-of-life products are stored in the recovery inventory for remanufacturing. The vehicle transports products from the manufacturing stock to the purchasing warehouse. The objective of this work is to simultaneously evaluate the optimal capacities of manufacturing stock, purchasing warehouse and the vehicle, as well as the optimal value of returned used end-of-life products. Those four decision variables minimize the total cost function. A discrete flow model, which is supposed to be the most realistic, is used to describe the system. An optimization program, based on a genetic algorithm, is developed to find the decision variables. Numerical results are presented to study the influence of transportation time, unit remanufacturing cost and configuration of the manufacturing/remanufacturing machines on the decision variables.
Highlights
Due to the increasing environmental preoccupation, the potential economic benefits and the legislation pressure, supply chain management has changed to focus on environmental impacts of production and earth resources’ preservation
The final results cannot be considered as optimal. In this particular context of long computing time of objective function, the optimization method we have developed allows converging towards the area of optimal solution by testing less than 1% of the solution space
We can add that the objective function is all but convex. It is quite flat around optimal solution
Summary
Due to the increasing environmental preoccupation, the potential economic benefits and the legislation pressure, supply chain management has changed to focus on environmental impacts of production and earth resources’ preservation. The authors have presented results that serve as a guide to implement sustainable production in factory companies and enrich the related theories of manufacturing decision As far as this topic is concerned, throughout the last two decades, an interesting sustainable concept, which is called closed-loop supply chain [5], attracts more and more researchers and company leaders. A reverse supply chain implies a relationship between these two markets and, when they coincide, we talk of a closed-loop network, instead of an open-loop network [7] In such supply chains, four major categories of return items have been defined: recycling of wasted products, reusable products, repair services and remanufacturing. This process has existed for years, especially for high-value items, such as locomotive engines and aircrafts (product life extension) [9], and it is spreading into more industries and product sectors than ever before
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