Identifying And Eliminating Constraints In Reverse Logistics System Of End-of-Life Home Appliance

The possessive quantity of End-Of-Life (EOL) home appliance increases rapidly in China year after year, and has brought about a huge pressure to Chinese ecological environment. Moreover many of these EOL home appliances have potential menace to the environment. Besides, the international policy on electronic product influences deeply to the home appliance industry of China. But there many problems should be improved such as defect of policy on recovering system and weakness of technology in process of recycling, remanufacturing and reusing in China. There are a series of uncertain problems in the reverse logistics network system of End-of-Life home appliance, and they have become the bottlenecks or constraints of implementing the reverse logistics strategy, so how to identify and how to eliminate these constraints are to be the important practical problems on pushing the reverse logistics strategy.This dissertation is conducted to apply the Theory of Constraints (TOC) to identify and eliminate the constraints existed in the reverse logistics system combined with simulation technique, it is going to support a technique referrence for government and manufacturers'decision-making meanwhile. The dissertation is an exploring study on reverse logistics system of end-of-life home appliance with the basic theory and method of TOC: it utilizes TP (Thinking Process) logic diagram of the Theory of Constraints (TOC) to identify the policy constraint existed in Collect Point of the reverse logistics system of EOL home appliance, and then offers the corresponding suggestions to eliminate the above constraint.; it utilizes the simulation technology to identify the resource constraint in the Remanufacturing Centre, and establishes the inventory buffer size model to eliminate the resource constraint by DBR (Drum-Buffer-Rope) scheduling method. Besides, it selects the optimized inventory buffer size which is suited to this system with the productive performance indicators of TOC.There are six chapters for expatiating the above key techniques of identifying and eliminating constraints which existed in the reverse logistics system of EOL home appliance in this dissertation, the main contents of each chapter is given respectively as below:Chapter 1, the introduction. The background, purpose and significance of this research are expatiated. The current research status in domestic and foreign countries, study contents and methods are introduced in this chapter, too.Chapter 2, the summarization of theory of constraints. The basic theory, method and tools of the theory of constraints (TOC) are induced systemically.Chapter 3, the study on policy constraint in the reverse logistics system of EOL home appliance. It applies the thinking process (TP) of TOC to identify and eliminate the policy constraint of the reverse logistics system of EOL home appliance step by step. It gives five advices for eliminating the policy constraint, thereinto, the injection 1 (establishing a right policy system) and the injection 2 (founding the incentive mechanism especially to customers, manufacturer and remanufacturing enterprises) are the ultimate countermeasure to eliminate RC1 and RC2. The government and the trade must perform uncompromisingly when these countermeasures are being pushed in China. And this chapter also indicates that the government should institute reasonable admittance system for the remanufacturing enterprises, and the behalf and actual situation of each body of the reverse logistics system of EOL home appliance must be considered during instituting the admittance system.Chapter 4, the study on resource constraint in the reverse logistics system of EOL home appliance.It mainly has a microscopic study on the remanufacturing center of the reverse logistics system of EOL home appliance and founds the inventory buffer size model; the goal of the study is to identify and eliminate the resource constraint in this center. Firstly, it identifies the resource constraint with the system simulation and finds the constraint unit Pc. Then, it eliminates this resource constraint by using DBR scheduling: it takes the constraint unit Pc as the Drum, and then sets the Buffer between Pc and its forward unit Pc-1. It controls the forword units with the Rope according to the pace of the Drum, aiming at the other units are synchronal with Pc in order to realize balancing the whole system logistics and even achieve the objective of eliminate the resource constraint. Moreover, it chooses performance and financial indicators of TOC to evaluate the effect of eliminating the resource constraint and frames the evaluating rules.Chapter 5, DBR system simulation case. This chapter has a simulation case study on validity of DBR system. The result indicates that it can eliminate the resource constraint of remanufacturing center with it.Chapter 6, the conclusion. This chapter summarizes the main research and also analyses the further study that are needed to do.The main results of this dissertation are as follows:1. It has a research on the policy constraint existed in Collect Point of the reverse logistics system of EOL home appliance with TP of TOC, and offers some detailed suggestions to eliminate the policy constraint, that gives policy support for establishing the everse logistics system of EOL home appliance;2. It identifies the resource constraint in the remanufacturing center of the reverse logistics system of EOL home appliance with the system simulation, and it establishes an inventory buffer size model with the DBR scheduling of TOC to eliminate the resource constraint;3. It has a simulation case study on the inventory buffer size model application and validates its validity of eliminating the resource constraint;4. It selects the optimized buffer size which is fit for the dissertation survey with TOC parameters and resource utilization after analyzing the simulation result.