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Recoverable product environments are becoming an increasingly important segment of the overall push in industry towards environmentally conscious manufacturing. Integral to the recoverable product environment is the recoverable manufacturing system that focuses on recovering the product and extending its life through remanufacture or repair. Remanufacturing provides the customer with an opportunity to acquire a product that meets the original product standards at a lower price than a new product. The flow of materials and products in this environment occurs both from the customer to the remanufacturer (reverse flow), and from the remanufacturer to the customer (forward flow). Since most of the products and materials may be conserved, essentially this forms a closed-loop logistics system. We present a 0–1 mixed integer programming model that simultaneously solves for the location of remanufacturing/distribution facilities, the transshipment, production, and stocking of the optimal quantities of remanufactured products and cores. We also discuss the managerial uses of the model for logistics decision-making.
Jayaraman et al. (1999) studied this question.