An Improved Network Design of Open Loop Reverse Supply Chain

In recent years, industries have been moving with tremendous speed towards "green thinking" as never before. Proceeding into a more circular economy will offer benefits such as reducing environmental burdens, enhancing the protection of raw material supply, increasing competition, promoting productivity, boosting sustainable economic growth and creating employment. Remanufacturing leads to circularity, while reverse supply chains pose difficulties. Closed loop supply chains are prioritized for reverse supply chain networks. However, alternative supply chains and different market actors make remanufacturing possible through open loops. In this study, a new integrated mathematical approach is proposed to address designing a multi-stage, multi-product and multi-period open loop reverse supply chain network which maximizes the profit and utilizes reverse logistics to benefit the environment in the most efficient way. The proposed approach presents a mixed integer linear programming model (MILP) that uses water treatment facility along with the common components of open loop reverse supply chain (OLSC). The objective determines the facility location and material flows between stages in each period. Using a realistic network instance, computational results are used to verify the feasibility of the study.