System Integration for Smart Reverse Logistics Management

To maximize the value and material recovery from waste products, smart reverse logistics aims at managing the complex flows of physical items, cash, data, and information. The effective management of these flows requires optimal decision making at strategic, tactical, and operational levels. To support the decision making, predictive, prescriptive, and descriptive analytics have been proved to be valuable at all three levels. However, because these analytical tools require different software packages, different coding languages, and different structures of data, the decision support for complex problems combining various analytical methods is usually an ad-hoc process and requires thus significant efforts. There is a lack of standardized solutions that comprise all the necessary modules for smart reverse logistics management. Thus, this paper proposes a conceptual framework with the purpose of guiding the next-generation system integration for smart reverse logistics management. It goes further with the design of six criteria for evaluating the integration maturity of a system. The initial concept is shown with existing software solutions through a case study in Norway, and several challenges are identified for future improvements.