Production And Pricing Policies In Reverse Logistics Remanufacturing System

Along with the rapid development of economics, the production activities use lots of natural resources while producing lots of used products, which makes the remanufac-turing reverse logistics be paid more attentions by the society; The competing of market leads to channel and market returns problem which pushes the company to enhance the returns logistics management.Motivated by above, we will consider the optimal model of operations decisions in the single product remanufacturing and return system. For the quantity uncertainty problem, we first discuss the production planning in the manufacturing/remanufacturing system when the demand and return quantity locate in a support; then we discuss the joint production and pricing problem in different channel when the product return and secondary discount selling are considered. For the quality uncertainty problem, we first discuss the production and sorting problem in the manufacturing and remanufacturing when the quality condition of the returned products is uncertain;Secondly, we further assume the remanufacturing cost obeys stochastic distribution, which reflect that the quality condition is uncertain, then study the joint production and pricing problem.1. Production and inventory policies with uncertain demand and returns. 1) Research Problem: We consider an inventory and production planning problem with uncertain demand and returns, in which the product return process is integrated into the manufacturing process over a finite planning horizon. 2) Research Method: We first propose an inventory control model for the return and remanufacturing processes with consideration of the uncertainty of the demand and returns. Then a robust optimization approach is applied to deal with the uncertainty of the problem through formulating a robust linear programming model. Finally, we provide a set of numerical examples to verify the effectiveness of the approach and analyze the effects of the key parameters on the solutions. 3) Research Results: We formulate the Robust optimization model in the form of linear programming for the manufacturing/remanfuacturing/disposal decisions with uncertain demand and return. We give the upper bound of the probability that the solutions invalid the constraints with the sensitivity analysis on the data uncertainty.2. Joint production and pricing policies with channel returns and uncertain demand. 1) Research Problem: We study optimal pricing and order(production) policies in supply chain management of the seasonal product with consideration of the product returns handling between supply chain partners. 2) Research Method: In order to study the channel performance and optimal policies, three stochastic channel models, which are centralized channel, decentralized channel and 3rd-party-involved channel, are addressed to handle the new and off-season products selling with B2B product returns. In the centralized channel situation, the closed-form solutions of optimal order and pricing decisions are proposed for the new seasonal product. Further, in the decentralized and 3rd-party-involved situations, Stackelberg game models are proposed. 3) Research Results: We show the existence and uniqueness of the optimal joint pricing and order policies for three different channels; And we also analysis the channel performance.3. Acquisition and production policies with uncertain returns quality condition. 1) Research Problem: A refurbishing system, composed of a collection center and refurbishing center, in which the quality of returned items is uncertain, is studied to seek for optimal acquisition and remanufacturable quality level. 2) Research Method: We assume that the remanufacturing and inspection cost depend on the quality level of the returned items. By giving the linear cost function over quality level, a stochastic profit model is formulated, to make decisions on how many returned items are collected and what quality levels of the returned items are refurbished, so as to maximize the total expected profit. Furthermore, we analysis the impact of quality level on the optimal decisions. 3) Research Results: We prove the existence and uniqueness of the optimal solution of the acquisition quantity and derive the formulation of the optimal solution. We also show that the quality level leads the increasing of acquisition but effectively enhances the system expected profit.4. Joint manufacturing and remanufacturing policies with uncertain return quality condition. 1) Research Problem: We study a two periods model for optimal joint manu-facturing/remanufacturing and pricing policies for a monopolist manufacturer, who can remanufacture and sell the remanufactured product distinguished by the consumers in the same market. 2) Research Method: By formulating the two periods optimization models, we discuss the optimal remanufacturing and manufacturing quality at the beginning of every period and further decide the selling prices. We take use of the two steps optimization methods and discuss the existence and uniqueness of optimal decisions in different situations. 3) Research Results: We give the equations for unique optimal decisions and the conditions. We also analyze the impact of quality on the two periods decisions. Furthermore, we show how the quality perceived factor affect the optimal decisions.