Industry 4.0 model for integrated circular economy-reverse logistics network

ABSTRACT

Industries are moving towards maintaining sustainable production and consumption considering reverse logistics by maximizing the value creation of the end-of-life products and streamlining the business operations effectively. However, the manufacturing industries are in an uncertain situation of excessive use of resources and deteriorating environment. Thus, it has become important to integrate circular economy and reverse logistics in the existing supply chain to foster environment and economic growth. In this context, the paper proposes a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model of Industry 4.0 to achieve a circular economy that includes reverse logistics. The proposed model also considers the deployment of the IoT sensors to capture the production real-time information for transparency and accuracy. The paper aims to optimize cost and maximize end-of-life of the products to establish an Industry 4.0 facility integrated with a circular economy and reverse logistic network. The proposed mathematical model is demonstrated on two data instances.

KEYWORDS:

• Industry 4.0
• IoT
• circular economy
• reverse logistics
• sustainability

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by UK-India Education and Research Initiative; University Grants Commission [grant number RP03411G].