Closed-loop Supply Chain System Performance Evaluation By Using The Second Law Of Thermodynamics

With the globalization of market competition, Supply Chain (SC) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) have emerged as the times require, it changes the traditional management modes of corporation. At the same time, people become to pay more and more attention to environment protection and resource utilization. Thus, it spurs enterprises to consider how to incorporate the reverse supply chain system with the traditional supply chain system in order to manage them well. We place the various activities of reverse supply chain in the framework of previous system, and reengineer the whole business process. Then, a new closed-loop structure system is formed which is called as closed-loop supply chain. Closed-loop supply chain can bring economic benefits for enterprises, protect the environment and save resources to gain social benefits at one time. So it becomes hot in supply chain research currently.This thesis emphasized on the methods of closed-loop supply chain system performance measurement. Based on the deficiencies of previous research, we try to put forward the feasibility of closed-loop supply chain system performance evaluation by using the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In chapter 1, several conceptions such as supply chain, supply chain management and its characteristics are introduced. After looking back to the background about the reverse supply chain evolving to be closed-loop supply chain and the meaning of closed-loop supply chain management, the definition of closed-loop supply chain system and closed-loop supply chain system performance are presented in the view of thermodynamics. Meanwhile, actions and policies related to the closed-loop supply chain implement in our country are mentioned also. The second chapter summarizes the problems existing in the research currently by retrospect on the correlative literatures of closed-loop supply chain system performance measurement, which can be departed into three discussion groups of economic performance, social performance and environmental performance. And then the innovations and advantages of our method are proposed corresponding. In chapter 3, results come out that closed-loop supply chain system has dissipation structure characteristics by introducing the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Therefore, we discuss the influences on both the operation performance internal and the environmental performance caused by entropy increase. Afterward, the model used for calculating the internal entropy and environmental entropy of closed-loop supply chain is propounded based on the analysis of energy transformation during the closed-loop supply chain processes. Although entropy qualifies as the index to evaluate the operation order and environmental effect of closed-loop supply chain, it can not reflect the utilization rate of effective negative entropy exactly. Consequently, the index of exergy, which is the natural metric for the quality of energy measurement, is introduced in chapter 4. Traditional exergoeconomics is extended to the domain of closed-loop supply chain management and a new viewpoint is provided to consider about reverse supply chain, economic cost and so on in closed-loop supply chain. Accordingly, by analyzing the exergy loss during the resources flows and exchanges between the system and environment, model for evaluating the comprehensive performance of close-loop supply chain system is established, metric about system negative environment effect is introduced to measure the resource utilization rate and environment friendly characteristics of closed-loop supply chain system and for comparison with different systems also. The case study with two cement closed-loop supply chain systems illustrates the approaches of entropy modeling and exergoeconomics method in chapter 6, combining with the current situation, problems we are facing and future developing trend of China cement industry. After analyzing and comparing with the results on the performance metrics of the two cement closed-loop supply chain systems in the two ways together, we find out the weak parts in cement close-loop supply chain systems and some suggestions for performance promotion are proposed.