Title: The role of quality uncertainty in remanufacturing decisions

Authors: Samar K. Mukhopadhyay, Huafan Ma

Addresses: SKK Graduate School of Business, Sungkyunkwan University, 53 Myungryun-dong 3-ga, Jongro-gu, Seoul 110-745, Korea. ' School of Business and Economics, Indiana University East, 2325 Chester Blvd., Richmond, IN 47374, USA

Abstract: In this study, we investigate the impact of the uncertainty resulting from various conditions of returns on firms| remanufacturing policy. We show that firms can deal with this problem strategically by handling returns of diverse quality levels differently. In some cases, they can remanufacture all of the acquired used products upon their receipt. In other cases, however, it will be more profitable for firms to make use of secondary market for selling returned products with relatively low quality, as-is, rather than remanufacturing them. We find the optimal remanufacturing policies under these different conditions.

Keywords: reverse logistics; remanufacturing policy; variable conditions; secondary market; quality uncertainty; product returns; used products.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBSR.2009.027197

International Journal of Business and Systems Research, 2009 Vol.3 No.4, pp.387 - 412

Published online: 17 Jul 2009 *

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