A manufacturing and remanufacturing aggregate planning model considering a non-linear supply function of recovered products

This article addresses the joint aggregate planning of a system for manufacturing new units and remanufacturing used units to obtain items that are indistinguishable from the original product. A variety of used conditions are taken into account. A forecast of the number of items at the end of their useful life in each period is assumed to be available and the proportion of items that are returned is a non-linear function of the price paid for them. The case deals with products such as copiers, printers and scanners, and with containers that require a complex refilling process. A mathematical program is obtained whose constraints and objective function have non-linear terms that are linearised by means of piecewise functions. The solution of several instances is addressed and one example is examined in detail.