Collection and remanufacturing channels selection under a product take-back regulation with remanufacturing target

Abstract

Consider a product take-back regulation with remanufacturing target imposed on a manufacturer. The manufacturer is responsible for regulation compliance by remanufacturing the product collected from multiple geographic regions. The channel alternatives for the manufacturer are 1) regional third-party collection firms, 2) regional third-party collection-remanufacturing firms, 3) a third-party firm for remanufacturing, 4) in-house collection, and 5) in-house remanufacturing. The paper proposes a mixed-integer linear programming problem (MILP) formulation for the manufacturer to select a combination of these channels to maximise the profit over a finite planning horizon. The decision model has the number of used products, remanufacturing approach, heterogeneity in the quality of returned products, and the remanufacturing target as constraints. We conduct numerical analysis using field study data for 200 litres of mild-steel drums in India to draw managerial insights. The vital suggestions and insights are as follows. 1) Regulators to impose incremental targets considering the current optimum level of remanufacturing. 2) A comprehensive remanufacturing target covering multi-region/market to discourage manufacturers from evading behaviour. 3) Managers to assist regional firms in increasing the recovery rate of products that can collect and remanufacture. 5) Manufacturers to remanufacture products during the decline stage of product life cycle (PLC) for higher profits.

KEYWORDS:

• Collection channels
• remanufacturing channels
• multiple regions
• reverse supply chain
• product take-back regulation
• reuse target

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 SEK is Swedish Krona, 1 SEK = 0.11 USD on 24^th January 2022

2 https://autorecyclingworld.com/eurostat-releases-figures-of-latest-elv-reuse-recycling-and-recovery-targets/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Siddhartha Kushwaha

Siddhartha Kushwaha received the B.Eng. degree from the Rajiv Gandhi Technical University, Bhopal, India in 2007, MBA and PhD degrees from Icfai Foundation for Higher Education (IFHE), Hyderabad India, in 2011 and 2017 respectively. He was Visiting Scholar to Dept. of Marketing & Supply Chain Management at Fogelman College of Business & Economics (FCBE), University of Memphis, TN, USA in year 2012–13. Currently he is associated with Department of Operations Management at Goa Institute of Management (GIM), Goa, India as Assistant Professor. His work has appeared in Journal of Cleaner Product. His current research interests include channel selection & planning, reverse supply chain, Binary integer programming.

Felix T.S. Chan

Felix Chan received his BSc Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Brighton University, UK, and obtained his MSc and PhD in Manufacturing Engineering from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London, UK. Prior joining Macau University of Science and Technology, Prof. Chan has many years of working experience in other universities including Hong Kong Polytechnic University; University of Hong Kong; University of South Australia; University of Strathclyde. His current research interests are Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Operations Research, Production and Operations Management, Distribution Coordination, Smart Manufacturing, AI Optimisation. To date, Prof. Chan has published over 16 book chapters, over 370 SCI refereed international journal papers and 310 peer reviewed international conference papers. His total number of citations > 10700, h Index =  53. Prof. Chan is a chartered member of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport in Hong Kong. Based on the recent compilation (2020) from a research group of Stanford about the impact of scientists (top 2% listed). The work is published in the following website: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000918. Prof. Felix Chan is categorised in the field of Operations Research, ranked 10 out of 23,455 scientists worldwide, i.e. Top 0.04% worldwide.

Kaustov Chakraborty

Kaustov Chakraborty is currently designated as an Assistant Profesor at the Institute of Management Technology (IMT) Ghaziabad, India. He has published papers in various peer-reviewed journals, such as Journal of Cleaner Production, Benchmarking: An international journal, International Journal of Logistics and System Management. His research interest includes remanufacturing, Closed-loop supply chain, Uncertainty modelling in supply chain management.

Saurabh Pratap

Saurabh Pratap is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT BHU), Varanasi, U.P, India. Previously, He was working as Assistant Professor at Indian Institute of Information Technology, Jabalpur, M.P, India from June 2017 to Nov 2020 and Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Industrial & Manufacturing Systems Engineering at University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong from Oct 2016 to June 2017. He received his M. Tech degree in Production Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Durgapur (India) in the year 2011. He has completed his Ph.D. degree in Industrial & Systems Engineering Department at IIT Kharagpur, India in 2016. He has authored several technical papers. His publications appeared in such journals as International Journal of Production Economics, International Journal of Production Research, Computers & Industrial Engineering, Annals of Operation Research, Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing and Maritime Economics & logistics. He carried out collaborative research with the Laboratory for production Management and Process in EPFL, Switzerland and University of Hong Kong, HK. He is working as a reviewer for 21 renowned International Journals.