Title: An inventory approach for a Local Collection Point in reverse supply chains

Authors: Qinglong Gou, Lihong Ren, Liang Liang, Zhimin Huang

Addresses: School of Management, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230036, PR China. ' School of Management, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230036, PR China. ' School of Management, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230036, PR China. ' School of Business, Adelphi University, Garden City, New York, NY 11530, USA; School of Business, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, PR China

Abstract: Product recovery has received increasing attention in recent years. For a product recovery system, collection of used products is one of the key concerns. This article focuses on a special Local Collection Point (LCP) which handles a single type of used products. This special LCP can either to recover the used products and resell them in second-hand markets, or to deliver them to the Centralised Returns Center directly. For such a reverse system, we initiate and develop a joint inventory policy to improve its efficiency. The arrival process of used products, the handling/repairing time and the customer arrival process for repaired products are all assumed random. By formulating the system into a continuous-time Markov chain, the system|s stationary distribution and its profit formulation are obtained. An algorithm for optimal inventory policies is developed. Managerial implications of the system characters and policies are discussed through the article.

Keywords: GrSCM; green supply chains; supply chain management; SCM; inventory models; LCP; local collection point; production recovery; reverse supply chains; product recovery.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSOC.2008.020377

International Journal of Sustainable Society, 2008 Vol.1 No.1, pp.55 - 84

Published online: 20 Sep 2008 *

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