System Reconfiguration for Reverse Logistics: A case study
With climate change becoming very concerning in the world today, reverse logistics has become important for several companies with respect to regaining the value of their products and/ or for proper disposal or recycling of returned products. The reverse logistics framework in this paper is inspired by research papers in the literature; reverse logistics plays an important role in the return and the remanufacturing processes of products to meet specific demands. Manufacturers face an increased flow of returned products in their system; hence, they need to effectively address the flow of returned products in their system and the challenges that occur in the remanufacturing processes due to the uncertainty related to the quantities and quality of the returned components. This research focuses on identifying the challenges encountered in a remanufacturing Reverse Logistics (RL) system and are illustrated with an automotive study. Lean Six-sigma techniques are used to find these issues encountered in the RL process or system, and a linear programming approach is taken to reconfigure the system to improve system throughput. The results obtained from the analysis and improvements done show that the facility should invest in additional machine-operator for process improvements and to increase the throughput of the system. After adjusting the various parameters, cost and production strategies, it is observed that the solutions are very similar.
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