Value of quality information of returns in product recovery management

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Mühendislik Fakültesi, Endüstri Mühendisliği Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2009

Öğrenci: ALTAN ATABARUT

Danışman: ZEYNEP PELİN BAYINDIR

Özet:

Returned products of many industries are transported backwards through supply chains for recovery, thus forming “closed-loop supply chains”. Benefits, forthcoming with more effective management of recovery of returns are gaining importance. However, some issues, such as lack of information required to assess the quality of the returned products, may translate into critical uncertainties in the product recovery decisions and prevent closed-loop supply chains from operating efficiently. Hence, it is envisaged that significant economies may be attained by increasing the quantity of information fed into the planning decisions related to returned products. Thus, the objective of this study is to test the hypothesis that ready availability of perfect quality grade information associated with returned products by means of “embedded systems”, may lead to improved over all performance of recovery operations. To this end, in this thesis, linear programming models of generic multistage recovery processes are built. It is demonstrated by computational studies that significant gains may be obtained especially in environments where the prices of recovered products are decreasing in time.