Forward-Reverse Logistics Network Design

Supply Chain Management involves the flows of materials and information among all of the firms that contribute value to a product, from the source of raw materials to end customers. Reverse logistics is a new and emerging area, and as such, only a limited amount of information has been published to date. It is the process of planning, implementing, and controlling efficiently, cost effective flow of raw materials, in-process inventory, finished goods and related information for the purpose of recapturing value or proper disposal. Reverse logistics may also include processing returned merchandise due to damage, seasonal inventory, restock, recalls, excess inventory, recycling programs, hazardous material programs, obsolete equipment disposition, and asset recovery. The objective of this book is to present a develop design model for multi-period multi-echelon forward-reverse logistics networks under risk. The model is formulated in a stochastic mixed integer linear programming (SMILP) decision-making form as a multi-stage stochastic program.