Potential assessment of an increased exchange of core information for remanufacturing in automotive reverse supply chains

Abstract

An increasing awareness of sustainability and scarcity of resources requires to enhance a product’s lifetime. Within the context of a circular economy, remanufacturing therefore can be applied. Used products (so-called ‘cores’) are returned to at least their original performance. An efficient planning and management of reverse supply chains (RSC) is a prerequisite for successful remanufacturing. Besides the required material flow from the customer via service centers, collection stations, and core brokers to the remanufacturing plants, the reverse flow of core information is essential. The multi-tier exchange of core information potentially facilitates reducing existent uncertainties in RSC, i.e. regarding timing, quantity, and quality of returned products. Yet, current approaches neither consider the multi-tier information flow nor the differentiation of core information for different downstream tasks in detail. Specifically, information flow in the automotive RSC remains to be researched in detail. Therefore, the potential of an increased exchange of core information for remanufacturing in RSC is explored in this paper. A literature review and expert interviews with the stakeholders in the automotive RSC are conducted to assess the status quo of information exchange. Based on this, relevant core-specific information, and their impact on increasing the efficiency of different downstream planning processes are identified. To quantify the potential of an increased information exchange, both a model for the categorical use of information and a receptor model are developed. It can be concluded that an increase in the exchange of information in remanufacturing goes along with a multitude of facilitations, e.g. regarding logistics optimization, material requirement planning and stochastic routing of cores. Moreover, due to the prioritization of core information, a sequence model for core information retrieval can be derived.