Remanufactured Products Research Articles

Optimal collection delegation strategies in a retail-/dual-channel supply chain with trade-in programs

A continuous supply of used products ensures large-scale remanufacturing. Manufacturers can delegate used product collection to third-party collectors (3PCs) that provide a trade-old-for-cash (TOC) program, in addition to collecting used products through a trade-old-for-new (TON) program. However, few studies have investigated the interactions between collection delegation and channel structure in a supply chain. To fill this gap, we develop game-theoretic models in a supply chain under traditional retail channel and dual-channel structures to explore whether and when the manufacturer adopts the collection delegation policy and examine the optimal channel choice for trade-ins. Our finding shows that the manufacturer always benefits from collection delegation, but the retailer would be worse off from such delegation in certain cases. To be specific, under the retail channel structure, collection delegation has no impact on the retailer when the salvage value of used products is relatively low, whereas it hurts the retailer when the salvage value is relatively high. However, under the dual-channel structure, collection delegation never affects the retailer. Moreover, we find that the manufacturer's channel choice depends on the consumer acceptance of the direct channel and the salvage value of used products. We further consider the case that the manufacturer does not introduce the TON programs to explore the effects of TON and the case that the new and remanufactured products are sold at different retail prices to examine the equilibrium strategies. Our results can provide useful managerial insights for decisions-makers who face the choice of collection delegation under different channel structures.

Retailer's make-or-buy decision for remanufactured products under in-house yield uncertainty

Remanufacturing is a sustainable practice, as it can save resources and alleviate environmental pollution. However, the production process can be subject to yield uncertainty if the manufacturer has limited remanufacturing capability. This study considers a retailer that sells both new and remanufactured products simultaneously. The retailer can either produce the remanufactured product in-house under yield uncertainty (Scenario I), or remove this uncertainty by relying on a third-party remanufacturer (Scenario O). We investigate the retailer's make-or-buy decision under in-store competition (between new and remanufactured products) and find that, remarkably, consumers’ high valuation of the remanufactured product induces the retailer to order an increased quantity of new products in both Scenarios O and I. In addition, we find that the retailer can obtain a higher profit in Scenario O because the new product supplier will strategically lower the wholesale price owing to the intensified supply competition, which could also benefit the new product supplier and, hence, achieve a win–win situation.

Extended Warranty Strategy and Its Environment Impact of Remanufactured Supply Chain.

To reduce environmental pollution, the government has issued relevant laws and regulations, and more and more enterprises engage in remanufacturing and recycling used products. Trade old for new and trade old for remanufactured have become marketing means to promote product recycling. The extended warranty service is used to promote the recycling of waste products. To design an optimal extended warranty service strategy and analyze its environment impact in a remanufactured supply chain, game theory is used to model the competitive relationship between a manufacturer and an E-commerce platform. Considering whether the E-commerce platform provides extended warranty service, four models are constructed, and the extended warranty service strategy and its environment impact can be analyzed. The results show that, when the level of substitutability between remanufactured and new products meets a certain rage, new or remanufactured products with extended warranty service strategy can increase the demand for new or remanufactured products, respectively. In the four models, the changing trends of manufacturer’s profit, E-commerce platform’s profit and supply chain’s profit, consumer surplus, environmental impact and social welfare are the same, but only the thresholds are different. From the perspectives of supply chain member, supply chain system, consumer, environment and society, the new and remanufactured products with extended warranty service strategy is the best choice.

Pricing and collection decisions of a closed-loop supply chain with fuzzy demand

This paper proposes one centralized and three decentralized models (manufacturer-dominated, retailer-dominated, and collector-dominated) for a closed-loop supply chain with fuzzy demand and different quality levels for second-hand products. Optimal pricing, collection ratios, and profit allocations for each model are determined through a combination of a Stackelberg game and a fuzzy cut-set method. The model is also successfully applied to a case of automobile starter. Results indicate that the centralized model can gain the highest expected overall profit if the cost coefficient of collection effort and the difference between unit mean transferred price and unit classification expense of recycled product are greater than the corresponding thresholds. For the three decentralized models, optimal prices of new products rise with the ratio of used products of different quality levels. However, the optimal prices of new and remanufactured products and the optimal collection ratios drop with the cost coefficient of the collection effort. Additionally, a counterintuitive result is identified. The optimal collection ratio reaches a maximum in the manufacturer-dominated model rather than the collector-dominated model. Two important management implications are derived from the results: First, all supply chain members should build strategic partnerships following a centralized model to maximize the expected overall profit; Second, the manufacturers should strive for raising the remanufacturing rate of recycled products to gain a maximum expected overall profit and a satisfactory collection ratio of recycled products.

Research on trapezoidal shape optimization of laser remanufacturing heterogeneous interface under fatigue load

How to evaluate and improve the performance of heterogeneous interface was the key to ensure the reliability of laser remanufacturing products. Based on the analysis of stress eigenvalues at interface singularity, a fatigue life model and a trapezoidal interface shape optimization model were established. Thirteen different trapezoidal interface shapes were designed for static and fatigue experiments to verify the correctness. The results showed that the interface fatigue life prediction was accurate, and the optimized trapezoidal interface shape could significantly improve the interface mechanical properties. These provided a theoretical basis for the shape pretreatment of the damaged position in remanufacturing.

Production planning optimisation in a sustainable hybrid manufacturing remanufacturing production system

In this study, we investigate a production planning problem in hybrid manufacturing remanufacturing production system. The objective is the determine the best mix between the manufacturing of new products, and the remanufacturing of recovered products, based on economic and environmental considerations. It consists to determine the best manufacturing and remanufacturing plans to minimising the total economic cost (start-up and production costs of new and remanufactured products, storage costs of new and returned products and disposal costs) and the carbon emissions (new products, remanufactured products and disposed products). The hybrid system consists of a set of machines used to produce new products and remanufactured products of different grades (qualities). We assume that remanufacturing is more environmentally efficient, because it allows to reduce the disposal of used products. A multi-objective mathematical model is developed, and a non dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) based approach is proposed. Numerical experience is presented to study the impact of carbon emissions generated by new, remanufactured and disposed products, over a production horizon of several periods.

Multi-objective production planning of new and remanufactured products in hybrid production system

In this study, we address the production planning problem within a hybrid manufacturing remanufacturing system. This system is composed of a single machine that can work in two modes: the first one that produces new products from raw materials and the second one that produces remanufactured products from returned used products. Our study is based on economic and environmental considerations where the goal is to determine the best manufacturing and remanufacturing plan that satisfies the demand for new and remanufactured products and simultaneously minimizes the total costs included (start-up, production, storage and disposal costs) as well as the minimization of the CO2 emissions generated by the new, remanufactured and disposed of products. A multi-objective mathematical model is established, and an approach based on a non-dominated genetic sorting algorithm (NSGA-II) is introduced; in addition, a technique of order performance by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS) is used to find the best compromise solution among the pareto front obtained by the NSGA-II algorithm. Finally, a computational experiment is implemented to study the influence of carbon emissions from new, remanufactured and discarded items over a production horizon.

Remanufacturing with material restrictions in monopoly and duopoly

In this paper, we study firms' pricing and competitive strategies. We discuss a monopolistic scenario with an original supplier (OS) and a duopolistic scenario with an additional independent supplier (IS). Moreover, we investigate the effects of manufacturing cost, remanufacturing cost, customer discount factor, acquisition rate and the entry of a competitor on OS's strategies. Our results show that, in monopoly, the OS's remanufacturing possibility does not always increase in customer discount factor. Moreover, a lower manufacturing cost promotes complementary relationships between new and remanufactured products. In duopoly, a lower manufacturing cost reduces the remanufacturing possibility of the IS. Furthermore, raising the price of a remanufactured product may not reduce the consumer demand. The proposed model can be applied to many industries where the managers have the full awareness of extended producer responsibility, and they are willing to engage in the project related to remanufacturing. [Submitted: 2 January 2020; Accepted: 6 June 2021]

Complex Dynamics of Pricing Game Model in a Dual-Channel Closed-Loop Supply Chain with Delay Decision

In this paper, we study a dual-channel closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) consisting of one manufacturer, one retailer and one third-party firm or platform (3P). The manufacturer wholesales new products through the traditional retail channel and distributes remanufactured products via 3P. We focus on establishing the dynamic Stackelberg game models for nondelayed and delayed cases, respectively. The existence and local stability of Nash equilibrium are examined as well as the complex dynamical behaviors of each model under various scenarios are investigated by numerical simulations, such as stability region, bifurcations, chaos, strange attractors, and so on. Moreover, the impacts of some key parameters on the performance of chain members are analyzed. In addition, the variable feedback control method is utilized to eliminate the system chaos. The results reveal that the high value of the consumer discount perception for remanufactured products and excessively fast price adjustment speed have a destabilization effect on the Nash equilibrium point. In addition, adopting delay decisions by manufacturer does not always make the system more stable because it can exert either positive or negative effect on the system’s stability, while an intermediate delay weight is conducive to the system have a higher chance to stay stable. Furthermore, the manufacturer’s profits will be declined significantly while the profits of retailer and 3P will be elevated to some extent when the system falls into periodic and chaotic motions, so chaos is not always necessarily detrimental to all the decision makers in the dual-channel CLSC.

Investigating a green supply chain with product recycling under retailer's fairness behavior

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>Due to the rapid increment of environmental pollution and advancement of society, recently many manufacturing firms have started greening their products and focusing on product remanufacturing. The retailing firms are also taking several efforts for marketing those products and thinking more about the fairness of the business. Keeping this in mind, this study investigates the effect of recycling activity and the retailer's fairness behavior on pricing, green improvement, and marketing effort in a closed-loop green supply chain. In the forward channel, the manufacturer sells the green product through the retailer while in the reverse channel, either the manufacturer or the retailer or an independent third-party collects used products. The centralized model and six decentralized models are developed depending on the retailer's fairness behavior and/or product recycling. The optimal results are derived and compared analytically. The analytical results are verified by exemplifying a numerical example. A restitution-based wholesale price contract is developed to resolve the channel conflicts and coordinate the supply chain. Our results reveal that (ⅰ) the manufacturer never selects the third-party as a collector of used products under fair-neutral retailer, (ⅱ) the fairness behavior of the retailer improves her profitability but it diminishes the manufacturer's profit, and (ⅲ) if the manufacturer does not pay much transfer price, then the collection through the third-party is preferable to the fair-minded retailer.</p>

Remanufacturing Marketing Decisions in the Presence of Retailing Platforms in the Carbon Neutrality Era.

Background: In response to the specific goals of carbon peaking and neutrality, remanufacture is becoming increasingly popular. With the marketplace being more and more adopted, an independent remanufacturer (IR) could sell its products via either the reselling model or the marketplace model. In order to contribute more to carbon neutrality, we investigate the optimal marketing decision for remanufacturing. We construct two models namely reselling model and the marketplace model, and further explore the effects of each marketing model on the decisions and profits of both the IR and the platform firm. Methods: We examine a platform firm that sells new products and an IR that sells remanufactured products under two marketing models based on game theory: (1) a reselling model in which the IR sells remanufactured products to the platform firm; then the platform firm resells to consumers; (2) a marketplace model in which the IR sells remanufactured products to consumers through the platform. Results: Our results show that aiming at carbon neutrality, the IR would be induced by the marketplace model to undertake remanufacturing operations and remanufacture products as many as it could still meet the market demand. Meanwhile, the marketplace model encourages the IR to rethink its work and manufacture more products under certain conditions. Furthermore, both the platform firm and the IR prefer the marketplace model to the reselling model within a Pareto zone. In addition, we find that both the platform firm and the IR could benefit from the marketplace model when they take carbon neutrality under consideration. Conclusions: This study provides managerial insight from two aspects. Remanufactures could decide their marketing model via thorough consideration of market competition, commission rate, and production cost. The government could do more to protect the marketplace environment in order to stimulate the internal vitality of the platform in the achievement march of carbon neutrality purpose. That is, this study will provide good guidance for sustainable development decision-making of remanufacturing marketing platforms, and further contributes to the achievement of the carbon neutrality goal.

Multiple Life-Cycle Products: A Review of Antecedents, Outcomes, Challenges, and Benefits in a Circular Economy

The importance of design and its contribution to society is heavily emphasised in the literature. Multiple life-cycle products are based on the ideology value retention of components, products, and materials after its use phase, and utilised for the next life cycle. It contributes to economic growth by reducing resource consumption and environmental impact. The objective of this study is to conduct a systematic literature review to understand what antecedents are involved in the generation of multiple life cycles. This study analyses 87 papers on the numerous life-cycle products, using designs for sustainability principles (Reuse, Refurbish, Remanufacturing, Recycle). The study highlighted that DfS could contribute to multiple life-cycle generation by enabling the products to be recoverable at the end-of-use or the end-of-life. The analysis identified antecedents being important for the product and related them to the outcome, benefits, and challenges. Managers need to carefully select the appropriate model for the product's design, evaluation of recovery alternatives, and prices of new and remanufactured products keeping in mind return uncertainty, quality, and volume of used products.

The effect of supply channel structures on remanufacturing, pricing, and acquisition management

This paper developed an acquisition management problem in a Closed-Loop Supply chain (CLSC) network. This study determines optimal selling prices of brand-new and remanufactured products, wholesale prices, and acquisition prices in various distribution and collection channel structures. It shows that determining the best structure is highly affected by the model’s parameters, as well as the decision-makers’ objectives. Moreover, precious managerial insights from five different viewpoints have been provided for decision-makers in order to benefit considerably from various situations of remanufacturing and acquisition activities, as well as manufacturing and distribution activities. Simulation approach is employed for analyzing the proposed solutions in different conditions.

Optimal pricing strategies with remanufacturing technological innovation under different power structures

With the development and promotion of remanufacturing, remanufactured products have gradually become popular. And the production of remanufactured products cannot be separated from the support of remanufacturing technology. However, it is not clear whether the implementation of remanufacturing technological innovation can benefit enterprises. Moreover, the evidence from industry practice shows that the power structure has a substantial influence on the decision-making behavior of enterprises. Therefore, we combined remanufacturing technological innovation and three power structures and constructed six models to analyze the effects of remanufacturing technological innovation and power structures on supply chain decisions in the competitive environment of new and remanufactured products. The results show that under a certain power structure, remanufacturing technological innovation can make supply chain members obtain higher profits. In the case of remanufacturing technological innovation, there is less investment in remanufacturing technological innovation under the manufacturer-led structure. At this time, when consumers are not sufficiently sensitive to remanufacturing technological innovation, the manufacturer will try to dominate as much as possible in pursuit of their interests. However, the supply chain system profit and social welfare under the manufacturer-led structure are not dominant. The Vertical Nash structure is more beneficial to the system profit and social welfare under this condition. When consumers are sufficiently sensitive to remanufacturing technological innovation, member profits, system profit, and social welfare can benefit from the retailer-led structure. In addition, changes in consumers’ sensitivity to remanufacturing technological innovation will not affect the retailer’s pursuit of more profits. The retailer-led is always the best choice for the retailer. This research result fills in the blank of the impact of remanufacturing technological innovation on supply chain decision-making in the competitive environment of new products and remanufactured products and can provide decision-making references for manufacturers, remanufacturers, retailers, and the government.

Remanufacturing of multi-component systems with product substitution

Motivated by the remanufacturing systems at Daimler AG and other automobile, aerospace and heavy machinery parts dealers/manufacturers, we develop a hybrid manufacturing/remanufacturing system with controlled two-way substitution between new and remanufactured products. We develop Markov decision processes for management on product-level as well as on component-level. We show that the optimal policy on product-level has the switching-curve structure under the assumption that the lost sales costs for new and remanufactured products are identical. Based on this structural result, we develop an efficient, close-to-optimal heuristic for the general product-level model and for the component-level model. Our numerical experiments indicate that two-way substitution on component level significantly reduces total cost. We also extend our model to strategic cost that includes environmental aspects in the objective function. For this model, we find that substitution appears to be a phenomenon primarily beneficial for profit-oriented firms. Sustainability-oriented firms require significantly less frequent product substitution.

Modeling and scheduling for remanufacturing systems with disassembly, reprocessing, and reassembly considering total energy consumption.

As one of the mainstream development directions of remanufacturing industry, remanufacturing system scheduling has become a hot research topic recently. This study regards a scheduling problem for remanufacturing systems where end-of-life (EOL) products are firstly disassembled into their constituent components, and next these components are reprocessed to like-new states. At last, the reprocessed components are reassembled into new remanufactured products. Among various system configurations, we investigate a scheduling problem for the one with parallel disassembly workstations, several parallel flow-shop-type reprocessing lines and parallel reassembly workstations for the objective of minimize total energy consumption. To address this problem, a mathematical model is established and an improved genetic algorithm (IMGA) is proposed to solve it due to the problem complexity. The proposed IMGA adopts a hybrid initialization method to improve the solution quality and diversity at the beginning. Crossover operation and mutation operation are specially designed subject to the characteristics of the optimization problem. Besides, an elite strategy is combined to gain a faster convergence speed. Numerical experiments are conducted and the results verify the effectiveness of the scheduling model and proposed algorithm. The work can assist production managers in better planning a scheduling scheme for remanufacturing systems.

Optimal Modular Remanufactured Product Configuration and Harvesting Planning for End-of-Life Products

AbstractRemanufacturing is a representative product recovery strategy that can improve economic profitability and sustainability, but many companies are struggling because of the lack of understanding of the market and the design strategies for remanufactured products. Unlike the production process of new products, remanufacturing requires unique production processes, such as collecting used products and dis(re)assembly. Therefore, several factors need to be considered for the design of remanufactured products. First, when designing a remanufactured product, it is crucial to ensure that the specifications of components meet the customer’s requirements because the remanufacturing uses relatively outdated components or modules. In addition, it is necessary to consider the disassembly level and order to facilitate the disassembly process to obtain the desired parts. This study proposes an integrated model to (i) find configuration design suitable for remanufactured products that can maximize customer utility based on customer online review analysis regarding End-of-Life products, and (ii) establish a harvest plan that determines the optimal disassembly operations and levels. This proposed model can be used as a decision-making tool that helps product designers find the appropriate design of remanufactured products while increasing the efficiency of the remanufacturing process.

Remanufacturing process innovation in closed-loop supply chain under cost-sharing mechanism and different power structures

This paper establishes a closed-loop supply chain considering remanufacturing process innovation and its cost-sharing mechanism, where a manufacturer can sell new and remanufactured products through a retailer and decide the effort to improve the remanufacturing process innovation. This paper examines remanufacturing process innovation, pricing decisions and cost-sharing mechanism under different power structures of the closed-loop supply chain. Three models with different power structures are investigated: (1) Manufacturer-led model (MLM); (2) Nash model (NM); (3) Retailer-led model (RLM). We derive and compare the optimal cost-sharing mechanism of the retailer to maximize its own economic performance in each power structure. We find that the performance of NM model is the most effective among the three models. Furthermore, the optimal cost-sharing proportion of the retailer in the RLM model is the highest, and interestingly, it’s not affected by the consumers’ value perception of the remanufactured products. What’s more, through numerical example, we find that when the consumers are more satisfied with remanufactured products, the cost-sharing mechanism will reduce the profits of the members with less power in the closed-loop supply chain.

The Impact of Carbon Trade on Outsourcing Remanufacturing.

Outsourcing remanufacturing is an important way to achieve resource recycling, green manufacturing and carbon neutrality goals. To analyze the impact of carbon trade on manufacturing/remanufacturing under outsourcing remanufacturing, this article builds a game model between an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and a remanufacturer under the carbon trade policy. In the outsourcing remanufacturing model, this article compares the impact of the carbon trade policy on the unit retail price, sales volume, revenue, environmental impact, and consumer surplus of new and remanufactured products. The research mainly draws the following conclusions: (1) Carbon trade increases the prices of both new and remanufactured products and the cost of outsourcing. Only when certain conditions are met can increased carbon trade prices increase revenue. (2) The carbon trade policy helps reduce the adverse impact on the environment, but only when the carbon trade price is greater than a certain threshold can it increase consumer surplus. (3) Consumer preferences and carbon emissions of the unit product affect manufacturers’ profits. Increased consumer preference for remanufactured products and reduced carbon emissions of remanufactured products contribute to increased sales and revenues.

Production and emissions reduction decisions considering the differentiated carbon tax regulation across new and remanufactured products and consumer preference

The traditional carbon tax always causes the inequalities, and thus a differentiated carbon tax regulation across new and remanufactured products is introduced in this paper. To explore effects of the differentiated carbon tax on production and emissions reduction decisions, the environment and social welfare, this paper formulates a profit maximization model and presents some theoretical analysis and numerical analysis. The study results show that: (1) Under the differentiated carbon tax regulation, whether the rising base carbon tax rate is conducive to remanufacturing activities mainly depends on emissions advantages in remanufacturing, but a lower tax rate for remanufactured products would always promote remanufacturing activities. (2) A higher base carbon tax rate would improve the emissions reduction investment level when the emissions reduction effectiveness in remanufacturing is also better, and it is always beneficial to the environment. However, a lower tax rate for remanufactured products may decrease the emissions reduction investment level, and whether it could reduce total carbon emissions depends on emissions advantages in remanufacturing. (3) The higher the base carbon tax rate is, the lower the social welfare when the environmental damage coefficient is small, but a lower tax rate for remanufactured products would be always beneficial to social welfare.