Study On The Third Party Reverse Logistics And Its Provider Selection

Two of the most significant problems of our era are the depletion of the natural energy and resources and the pollution caused from the disposal of waste end-of-life products. An effective reverse logistics (RL) operation can help organizations make good use of nature energy and resources and take healthy balance between economy and environment. Thereby RL has emerged as one of the most rapidly evolving research fields in the past few years.In the context of implementing sustainable development policies and developing circular economy in China, the paper makes scientific researches on the issue of the third party reverse logistics (3PRL) on the basis of the theories presented by international logistics scholars and the practical experience obtained from managers of foreign enterprises. From the viewpoint of client enterprises, we discuss the decisions on whether to outsource RL functions and how to select a 3PRL provider. On the other hand, from the viewpoint of the third party logistics (3PL) providers, we analyze the decision process for RL market entry by 3PL providers.This paper firstly introduces the research actuality, conception and management trend of RL. Then we present a decision model for enterprises performing RL activities based on the analysis of the obstacles and affected factors in the process. After that, the paper introduces a decision model to assist 3PL providers to analyze the feasibility of RL market entry. Finally, the paper creates an evaluation index system for selecting a 3PRL provider, and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is applied to calculate the objective weights. On the basis of this, an evaluation model is built to evaluate 3PRL providers by using the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation methodology, and an example demonstrates the model's efficiency.