| In recent years, there have been substantial interests in sustainable processes for the end-of-life products to conserve natural resource and reduce landfill wastes. Among these processes, recycling and remanufacturing provides opportunities for practitioners from various industries and government regulators to mitigate the environmental impacts while maintaining economic viability. Meanwhile, there are substantial critical decisions for the decision/policy makers to reap to the economic and environmental benefits from the recycling and remanufacturing processes. Therefore, in this study, I investigate the product weight reduction and used-product collection decisions in the context of closed loop supply chains with product recycling. Furthermore, from a real options perspective, I investigate the optimal timing of remanufacturing with the remanufacturing cost following a stochastic process, and the optimal timing of remanufacturing and replacement with the maintenance costs following stochastic processes. Also, in this study, I investigate the influences of the governmental economic instruments on the recycling and remanufacturing decisions, and examine the environmental viability of these sustainable incentives. A series of managerial insights and policy implications are obtained from analytical and numerical analyses. |
