Reverse Supply Chain Management Research Articles

The circular supply chain: a paradigm shift towards sustainable resource

In light of recent studies, we find that the circular economy has become a key component in corporate strategies to promote environmental sustainability. In this regard, corporations are increasingly adopting the circular economy perspective to review their supply chain management practices in a sustainable manner. This paradigm shift suggests the need for a circular approach to supply chain management, moving from simple efficiency and waste reduction to a philosophy that promotes product redesign, reuse and transformation. The circular supply chain approach involves a number of interlinked elements, including product design for circularity, reverse logistics, remanufacturing (re-manufacturing), recycling and waste management. These components are integrated at different stages of the supply chain with the aim of maximising resource recovery and minimising environmental impact. Particular emphasis is placed on supply chain collaboration, which is considered one of the key drivers of the circular economy and circular supply chains. The analysis of the circular supply chain management concept highlights five dimensions of circular supply chain management: closed-loop supply chain management, reverse supply chain management, remanufacturing supply chain management, recycling supply chain management and industrial symbiosis.

A novel coordination mechanism to coordinate the multi-agent reverse supply chain with fairness concerns

In the recycling industry, reverse supply chain (RSC) management with used and end-of-life product collection and remanufacturing has an important role to play with respect to improving environmental sustainability. Such a RSC is generally composed of more than two heterogenous agents such that the existing contracts in the literature fail to coordinate it. Besides, as long as one of these agents makes profit comparisons and exhibits fairness concerns, it would further complicate this coordination problem. In this paper, we develop a biform game-based coordination mechanism, combining the non-cooperative and cooperative games, to coordinate a multi-agent RSC with one remanufacturer and two competition collectors, where one of the collectors has distributional fairness concerns. Applying the game-theoretic and numerical analyses, we obtain the following results: (1) Our proposed methods accomplish the coordination in the sense that all the RSC agents are better off than in the case of the non-cooperative game. (2) We identify the conditions under which the fairness-minded collector would achieve fair outcomes in the biform game, as is the case for the non-cooperative game. (3) In contrast to the non-cooperative game case, the biform game mechanism resolves the impact of fairness concerns on the recycling channel to a certain extent, as both the coalition externalities and biform game-based contracts make it more compatible across all RSC agents. Our main contributions are the adoption of novel biform games combined with behavioral economics factors to study the coordination challenge of multi-agent RSC with collector's fairness concerns.

A blockchain-enabled framework for reverse supply chain management of power batteries

The production and sales of electric vehicles in China are continuously increasing, and a massive wave of scrap batteries is about to emerge. However, there are many challenges in the power battery recycling, such as a disorganized recycling system, a lack of standards, and low efficiency. In addition, the power battery recycling supply chain faces issues such as a lack of transparency, inadequate data management, low trustworthiness, and counterfeit products. Therefore, it's crucial to establish an efficient and sustainable power battery supply chain recycling system. Blockchain technology can provide solutions in decentralized data management, privacy protection, and anti-counterfeiting traceability. It addresses existing problems and improves the Power Batteries Reverse Supply Chain (PBRSC) ecosystem. Thus, this paper proposes a blockchain-based PBRSC management integration framework. Firstly, a four-layer blockchain power battery recycling platform is designed. Secondly, based on the proposed PBRSC framework, this paper studies three key component technologies: double-chain structure and its storage mechanism, information tracing module, and smart contract enabled battery trading management. Then, the validity and feasibility of the double-chain structure was demonstrated experimentally. Finally, the above architecture and key technologies are implemented in the system, the main functional modules are displayed on the interface, and the effectiveness of the framework is explained in cooperation with related enterprises.

The Effects of Data Security and Perceived Benefits on Mobile Phone Recycling Behaviour and the Recycling Intention Mediation Role

Mobile phones are the most heavily utilised electronic devices on a global scale. Since they are relatively smaller than other electronic devices, unlike other electronic waste (e-waste), they are not disposed of properly. Hence, this study examines the factors influencing mobile phone users’ overall intention to recycle their mobile phones. The factors used originate from the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), but additional factors were also included, namely, perceived benefits and data security, to allow for a more in-depth analysis of customer behaviour. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was employed to analyse 601 results from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) through a self-administered online survey. The results demonstrate that perceived benefits (whether environmental or financial) and perceived behavioural control possess the most statistically significant positive effects on the UAE mobile phone users’ intention to participate in reverse supply chain (RSC) processes such as refurbishing or recycling. The impacts of attitude and subjective norms were the second most positive influences. Meanwhile, only 7% of UAE mobile phone users were significantly impacted by data security in participating in RSC processes. Additionally, recycling intention had no noticeable mediation effect on the relationship among the TPB variables and the extended variables (namely, data security and perceived benefits) and mobile phone recycling behaviour. The study offers confidence to industrial players in implementing these particular factors in their reverse supply chain management (RSCM) systems to influence more users to return end-of-life (EOL) or end-of-use (EOU) mobile phones, which could, in return, assist in resource preservation and environmental protection.

Green, Closed Loop, and Reverse Supply Chain: A literature review

This paper is the first attempt in reviewing and categorizing the literature in three different fields of supply chain including: Green Supply Chain (GSC), Closed Loop Supply Chain (CLSC) and Reverse Supply Chain (RSC) those are partially interconnected. For this reason, each one of these three topics has been divided into several criteria and each criterion is a review of several similar issues. This research aims to: Clarify the different area undergone the researcher’s investigation in the three mentioned filed of supply chain management; Show the differences and similarities of green supply chain management, closed loop, supply chain management and Reverse supply chain management; Provide researchers with future research directions in these three fields. This research tries to reach the mentioned objectives through reviewing the other research and summarizing them in parts. The first part will discuss what has been done and second part is reviewing what have been found. Finding also discusses what is done regarding these three topics and their boundaries as well as recommendations for future works (What can be done).

Reverse Supply Chain Management Through a Quantity Flexibility Contract: A Case of Stochastic Remanufacturing Capacity

This article investigates a two-echelon reverse supply chain (RSC) where a third-party logistics provider charges customers to return outdated products. A green manufacturer refurbishes qualified returned products through the remanufacturing process. Remanufacturing capacity is considered a stochastic variable. Under the volatility of remanufacturing capacity, some likely examined, and qualified products could not be remanufactured. If a collected product cannot be processed, it should be salvaged at a lower value and be perceived as a lost profit. In such scenarios, increasing the quantity of returned outdated products is suitable if there is a strong possibility of enough capacity in the remanufacturing process. This paper develops a stochastic model to identify the optimal order quantity under diverse contracts, including wholesale price, centralized, and quantity flexibility contracts. Under the quantity flexibility contract, the green supplier might cancel its preliminary order in a restricted quantity. Additionally, third-party logistics supplier offers a restricted quantity above the initial order to minimize understocking during peak seasons. Our numerical experiments demonstrate that the suggested quantity flexibility can coordinate the examined RSC under the volatility of remanufacturing capacity. Contrary to wholesale and centralized contracts, quantity flexibility is a more practical alternative from the perspective of participants’ profitability.

Reverse supply chain management with dual channel and collection disruptions: supply chain coordination and game theory approaches

Reverse supply chain management with dual channel and collection disruptions: supply chain coordination and game theory approaches

Sustainable Supply Chain Management in a Circular Economy: A Bibliometric Review

Since the mid-2010s, the circular economy has emerged as a key conceptual lever in corporate efforts to achieve greater environmental sustainability. Corporations have increasingly drawn upon the circular economy perspective in efforts to rethink sustainable supply chain management practices. This new corporate approach to sustainable supply chain management is evident in an emerging literature that has yet to be fully documented. In this systematic review of research, bibliometric methods were applied to a database of 709 Scopus-indexed documents. Author co-citation analysis identified four schools of thought comprising the intellectual structure of this literature: Sustainable Production and Environmental Management, Sustainable Supply Chain Management, Reverse Supply Chain Management, and Circular Economy. Synthesis of these themes suggests that the adoption of a circular economy perspective is transforming sustainable supply chain management in two important ways. First, this perspective reorients supply chain management away from a narrow focus on efficiency and waste reduction and towards a new paradigm of redesign, reuse, and product transformation. Second, adoption of the circular economy highlights and leverages reverse cycles in the supply chain. Thus, circular economy business models enable supply chain management to enhance corporate contributions to sustainable production and consumption. Drawing upon this framing of supply chain management within a circular economy, the review proposes a new framework for accelerating corporate sustainability.

Forecasting the Number of End-of-Life Vehicles: State of the Art Report

AbstractAcademics and practitioners have shown a growing interest in automobile reverse supply chain (RSC) management as a result of the rise of circular economy and the development of Industry 4.0. Accurate quantity prediction enhances the efficiency of all decision levels in automobile RSC, not only the recovery of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs). Therefore, a comprehensive state-of-the-art review, evaluating ELVs quantity forecasting methodologies and summarizing the main variables influencing forecasting outcomes, is conducted to throw shed light on future research directions.

Effect of Big Data Analytics in Reverse Supply Chain

The main purpose of this paper is to know about the recent status of big data analytics (BDA) on various manufacturing and reverse supply chain levels (RSCL) in Indian industries. In particular, it emphasises on understanding of BDA concept in Indian industries and proposes a structure to examine industries’ development in executing BDA extends in reverse supply chain management (RSCM). A survey was conducted through questionnaires on RSCM levels of 330 industries. Of the 330 surveys that were mailed, 125 completed surveys were returned, corresponding to a response rate of 37.87 percent, which was slightly greater than previous studies (Queiroz and Telles, 2018).The information of Indian industries with respect to BDA, the hurdles with boundaries to BDA-venture reception, and the connection with reverse supply chain levels and BDA learning were recognized.

Integrated reverse supply chain model for food waste based on industry 4.0 revolutions

The present research offeres a model to the advantage of operations for the food reverse supply chain by perfor-mancing Industry 4.0 Revolutions model of expanding a fuzzy multi-phase model for the food waste gathering reverse supply chain. This study introduces, a household waste recycling machine, which symbolizes the Industry 4.0 Revolutions. Also, electric-type vehicles have been considered for collection and delivery in accordance with the Industry 4.0 Revolutions. The rate of technology has been described in recycling stations. Several methods with different technologies to recycle food waste have been selected and assessed based on the Industry 4.0 Revolutions indicators. The food wastes are sent to recycling stations, that is places maintained, operated or used to store, buy or sell wastes before they recycled with appropriate technology. The understudy model is multi-objective, maximizing the benefit of recycling and customer response and minimizing the adverse effects of environmental pollution and transportation costs. In this research, the whale optimization algorithm is applied. The present work proposes an end-to-end solution for Reverse Supply Chain Management for food waste based on the Industry 4.0 Revolutions.

Reverse supply chain management approach for municipal solid waste with waste sorting subsidy policy

Continuously increasing municipal solid waste (MSW) generation, which has resulted in serious environmental pollution, resource consumption, and health problems, requires a disposal stream for improved recycling and reuse. In this study, a novel methodology is proposed that combines advanced “hard path” technologies and “soft path” policy to facilitate an effective and sustainable waste-to-energy approach. Multiple tech-economic MSW cascaded systems were established and combined for MSW terminal treatment, and a subsidy policy was applied to waste source management. Furthermore, an MSW reverse supply chain (MSWRSC) was proposed that integrates waste source and end treatment management, and a multi-objective mixed-integer dynamic model was established to optimize the MSW treatment process by achieving cost control, carbon emission reduction, and job creation. A practical case study was then conducted to provide the analysis paradigm including the system deployment and facilities operation. Further, some important conclusions and suggestions are summarized for reference by the local government and facilities. Therefore, the methodology that combines the cascade treatment systems with policy instruments shows important theoretical and pragmatic significance for the multi-dimensional sustainable development of MSW management.

Multi-dimensional circular supply chain management: A comparative review of the state-of-the-art practices and research

The circular economy (CE) concept has gained wide attention in practice as well as in academia in recent years. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art practices and research in “circular supply chain management” (CSCM), i.e., the integration of CE thinking into supply chain management (SCM) with the goal of achieving “zero wastes”. The review covers 68 real-life CE implementation cases collected by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and 124 publications in well-established, high-ranking academic journals in operations and supply chain management. The comparative review shows that CSCM encompasses multiple dimensions, including closed-loop SCM, reverse SCM, remanufacturing SCM, recycling SCM, and industrial symbiosis. A multi-dimensional CSCM (MD-CSCM) framework is developed to synthesize their interrelationships and to categorize academic publications into multiple research themes. Based on the identified research-practice gaps and pressing research needs, this study discusses important directions for future studies to advance supply chain circularity.

Optimal timing of acquisition price announcement for used products in a dual-recycling channel reverse supply chain

The rapid development of information technologies enables recycling companies to purchase and collect used products from consumers through both traditional and Internet-based online channels. Because an online channel transmits price information instantly to consumers, choosing the best time to announce the recycling price (i.e., acquisition price) of used products to consumers has become a critical problem for recycling companies. This paper seeks to solve this problem by developing a game-theoretic model describing a dual-channel reverse supply chain consisting of a recycling company and a third-party collector in which the recycling company purchases products not only through a third-party collector, but also directly from consumers online. We derive two major results by solving the model. The first is that first-mover advantage arises, which indicates that each firm constituting a dual-channel reverse supply chain should announce its own recycling price before the other. This first result is notable because it is exactly opposite to conventional wisdom that the second-mover advantage of pricing usually emerges when price competition occurs among firms in a horizontal relationship, which is well known in noncooperative game theory. The second result is that the recycling company can maximize its own profit and consumers' surplus by announcing its recycling price in the online channel before or upon, but not after, determining the transfer price paid to the collector for products collected in the offline channel. Both results can be used as practical decision-making guidelines in dual-recycling channel reverse supply chain management.

Modeling and optimization for noise-aversion and energy-awareness disassembly sequence planning problems in reverse supply chain.

Nowadays, the reverse supply chain management receives much attention because of its critical role in environmental protection and economic development. Disassembly is very important in the reverse supply chain. It aims at dismantling valuable components from end-of-life products which are then remanufactured into like-new ones after reprocessing and reassembly operations. To efficiently organize and manage the remanufacturing process from the perspective of sustainable development, this work proposes a stochastic disassembly sequence planning problem with consideration of noise pollution and energy consumption to achieve disassembly profit maximization. A chance-constrained programming model is formulated to describe it mathematically. Then, a discrete marine predators algorithm combined with a stochastic simulation approach is specially designed. By conducting simulation experiments on some real-life instances and comparing the designed approach with two popularly known methods in literature, we mainly find that the proposed model and approach can make better disassembly plan for the investigated problem with maximal profit subject to the given noise pollution and energy consumption constraints. The results demonstrate that the proposed method can efficiently and effectively handle the considered problem, which contributes to reaching the highly reliable and environmentally sustainable disassembly process.

Factors Affecting Mobile Waste Recycling through RSCM: A Literature Review

Mobile phone consumers have been motivated by the rapid growth of technology and encouraged to update their devices regularly to keep up with new innovations, architectures, and capabilities. Consequently, mobile/cell phone waste has risen significantly in the last decade. Due to their small size, it is convenient for users to keep outdated or unused mobile phones at home or the office, rather than recycling them appropriately. A reverse supply chain (RSC) is one possible method of mitigating the questionable e-waste activity present in the ecosystem. RSC has been significant for the mobile phone industry, user states, analysts, and scholars. This paper reviews the available literature in the RSC management (RSCM) domain, along with its processes and strategies. The paper reviews 223 published scholarly papers in the domain of mobile phone waste recycling and investigates 22 papers related to factors influencing consumers’ intention with regard to electronic recycling, focusing on mobile devices, which contribute significantly to electronic waste management practices.

An optimal put option contract for a reverse supply chain: case of remanufacturing capacity uncertainty.

Reverse supply chain (RSC) management can be implemented to ameliorate environmental and economic goals simultaneously. In 2020, the devastating influences generated by the COVID-19 global pandemic had established high uncertainty in the manufacturers' capacity, which can hinder the fulfillment of such goals. To address such a problem, in this research, we analyze a two-echelon RSC, including a re-manufacturer who, despite facing the remanufacturing capacity uncertainty, remanufactures eligible obsolete products, then re-enters the marketplace, and a collector who accumulates eligible obsolete products from consumers. We survey centralized and decentralized decisions, and also a condition where the collector, as a Stackelberg game leader, offers a put option contract as a risk-sharing approach and decides on both option and exercise prices; in return, the re-manufacturer determines the order quantity. Contrary to previous studies in which the value of option contracts has been analyzed under demand disruptions, this paper aims to address the performance of a put option contract to mitigate the remanufacturing capacity uncertainty in an RSC. Our results demonstrate that by offering the put option contract and determining the option price as nearly low as the marginal refund cost, not only can the collector motivate the re-manufacturer to augment its order quantity but both parties also attain a win–win profit-sharing outcome. Besides, the customized put option contract can achieve Pareto-improving channel coordination in the condition of remanufacturing capacity uncertainty.

Feasibility and Effectiveness Analysis of ICT for Reverse Supply Chain Management

Feasibility and Effectiveness Analysis of ICT for Reverse Supply Chain Management

SÜRDÜRÜLEBİLİR TEDARİK ZİNCİRİ YÖNETİMİ PERFORMANS DEĞERLENDİRME KRİTERLERİNE YÖNELİK ALAN ARAŞTIRMASI

The most important factors for the sustainability of supply chain management are economic, social and environmental factors. In order to maintain sustainability in this field, companies need to see areas where they can improve by performing performance evaluation. For this purpose, in this study, it is aimed to determine the criteria to be used in the performance evaluation of sustainable supply chain management. In this respect, firstly, the performance criteria of supply chain management and reverse supply chain management studied in the literature are examined separately; these main criteria have been defined by taking into account economic, social and environmental factors. As a result of the literature review, 46 sub-criteria are determined which are in line with the main economic, social and environmental criteria. It is planned to make priority ranking of these criteria and to use the criteria which are obtained at a high rate according to their importance levels in performance evaluation. Representatives and academicians from the sector are asked to score 46 performance evaluation criteria according to their importance level. With the findings obtained, it is aimed to determine the criteria of high importance by performing Pareto Analysis. As a result of the studies carried out, nine new criteria can be added to the literature and a total of 33 criteria have been determined for performance evaluation. The criteria that companies can use for performance evaluation in the field of sustainable supply chain management are finalized and it is aimed to gain value for the sectors to improve themselves.

Reverse supply chain management in manufacturing industry: a systematic review

PurposeIn a quest to meet increasing pressure to incorporate environmental and sustainability factors due to the legislations and growing public awareness, companies are rethinking of strategizing their supply chain network to take control of the reverse flow of products as well. This growing interest has also led to tremendous growth in publications occurring in several reputed journals in the last few years. In this context, the purpose of this article is to perform a systematic literature survey of recent and state-of-the-art papers in order to draw insights and highlight the future directions.Design/methodology/approachThis paper has selected and reviewed 204 papers published from the year 2002–2017. The papers were collected from the web of science and Google scholar database which have the DOI number. The selected papers were then categorized into main five core areas of RSC management namely reverse supply chain (RSC), Reverse Logistics (RL), Remanufacturing, Closed-Loop Supply Chain (CLSC) and Product Recovery Systems (PRS) and then analyzed with great detail. Finally, the research gaps that were identified from the study have been highlighted for future research opportunities.FindingsThis paper would serve as a roadmap to the managers who wish to align their forward and reverse supply chains for overall growth and development. It provides an in-depth knowledge on RSC to the researchers working in this domain. The scholars would be able to identify the areas of RSC which have been already addressed and the areas which remain unaddressed.Originality/valueThis paper presents a systematic literature survey of state-of-the-art papers that was published in the reputed journal in the area of RSC. Total 204 numbers of papers which were published in the reputed journals between 2002 and 2017 are reviewed, categorized and analysed to draw the opportunities and future research direction in the area of RSC.