Facility-location Problem Within Reverse Logistics Network Containing Post-sale Service

Reverse logistics is a special closed-loop supply chain. In contrast with the traditional supply chain. It is a logistics activity which contains product return-ing, material substitution, materials recycling, waste treatment, reprocessing, maintenance, re-manufacturing processes and so on.The enterprises who are forced by the economic conditions in the market take some competitive measures such as talent, quality, price and other aspects to raise their competitiveness. The post-sale service is an important means of companies. The post-sale service of products generally means that the operators provide customers many labor services such as delivery or installation, mainte-nance, providing spare parts and exchange services after products are sold. In order to offer the post-sale service to customers quickly and easily, manufactur-ers set up some facilities such as service centers and so on. When a product has serious quality problems, it needs to return to the product manufacturer or inte-grated service center to be repaired. Considering these factors, if the producers want to optimize the post-sale service network, they must determine numbers and locate of the facilities as post-sale service center, integrated service center and manufacture in the reverse logistic networks for post-sale service. This article discuss a problem based on these factors, the paper is divided into three chapters to describe.In chapter 1, the origin and application background of facility-location prob-lem in a reverse logistics network containing post-sale service are introduced, then the relevant definitions and theory is involved. At last, a brief introduction of the main results of the article are summarized.In chapter 2, we take the integrated service center into reverse logistics net- work of post-sale service. And we propose a mixed integer linear programming model of manufacturer, post-sale service center and integrated service center at the cases of the customer demand the return of quantity are known. Its objective is to minimize the total cost of the reverse net. Furthermore, an useful algorithm based on genetic algorithm is designed for the model. Finally, the model is tested on an example for illustrating is feasibility and effectiveness.In chapter 3, we consider the uncertainty of demand quantity of product and the quality of recycling product of different periods in deferent districts in closed-logistics system, a mixed integer linear programming model is established with ability restricted operation of positive and reverse logistic. Let the minimal total cost of operation be the objective, decide the number, scale and the location of each kind of facilities and the logistics distribution of the system. In the end, an example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the model. At last, an useful algorithm based on genetic algorithm is proposed to solve this problem, and a numerical experiments are shown to prove the efficiency of the model and the method.