A Multi-phase Planning Approach To Returned Logistics Network

With the increasing pressure of environment and resource, people begin to pay more attention to improve the efficiency of resource using while in order to cut down the social costs in economic development. Such endeavor is promoting the substitution of the circulation economy whose character is material's circulation utilization for the traditional and unidirectional linear economy. Consequently, in order to form an integrated circulation network, a reformation of the former supply chain is required, that is, enterprises not only need to put traditional forward logistics in practice, but also add a feedback processing of the resource—returned logistics. At present, quantitative investigations of the returned logistics network are mainly concentrating on network designing, stock control and production planning, and network designing is the most basic question in the design of returned logistics network.The article analyzed the characteristic of returned logistics and the current architecture of returned logistics network firstly. Then, it proposed a multi-phase designing approach to returned logistics network. That is the network designed in three stages in turn according to the processes and characteristics of returned logistics activities. The three stages are as follows:First stage: By using the mathematical programming method, the returned products' value was analyzed and appraised to determine returned products which should enter the returned processing. It guaranteed those products that have the most value after they were recovered. This stage was based on the disassemble cost and the recovering cost of the returned products built a mathematical programming model and solved the model by LINGO, and made a decision about the selection of the returned products.Second stage: As having a number of processing plants, delivering the different returned products into different recovery plants, the recovery costs and incomes are different obviously. Because there are many factors for choose of plants, the pure quantitative or qualitative method has its limitations. So this stage used the method combining quantitative analysis with qualitative analysis - fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) to choose plants.Third stage: The primary mission of the third stage was to determine the economical quantity of transportation. Not only this question considered the quantities of goods from the product recycling center to the potential facilities, but considered quantities of goods from the potential facilities to the product demand center. Therefore this stage was to establish a mathematical programming model for the two transportation phases and to solve the model by LINGO.This multi-stages programming method was based on the characteristic and value assessment of the returned products and economic value of the whole process from used-products' recovery to their reusing divides the network planning into three stages, in which different method was adopted according to the aim and characteristics of different stage. The multi-stages method could make the main influence factors considered sufficiently in each stage and could guarantee the whole efficiency and rationality of the network operation.