Research On Reverse Supply Chain Network Design Under Uncertainty

With sustained and rapid development of China’s social economy, the quality of people’s material life and the public’s environmental protection consciousness have been improving gradually. Recycling and reusing waste cell phones has attracted great attention of the public and it is significant to the society. China has enacted relevant laws and regulations to manage the process of recycling and reusing waste cell phones. Recycling and reusing waste cell phones efficiently and effectively cannot be separated from a scientific reverse supply chain network design, in that reverse supply chain network design determines the number, locations of facilities and material flows between facilities, thus determines the cost of the whole reverse supply chain network. Under this background, a research on reverse supply chain network design of recycling and reusing waste cell phones was made in this paper, and several problems in uncertain reverse supply chain such as location decision, routine selection and inventory controlling were studied, with the hope of providing companies that will construct reverse supply chain network valuable decisions and suggestions.Firstly, this paper analyses the research background, research significance and research status at home and abroad of reverse supply chain network design under uncertainty. Secondly, this paper studies several classic location problems, and presents the Stanford six-step scenario analysis method. Thirdly, on the basis of the P-median problem, the paper builds a reverse supply chain location model with uncertain recovery rate, service level and remanufacturing rate, and analyzes the influence of three kinds of uncertainties on location. And the paper gets some findings as follows:(1) The increase of recycle rate leads to the increase of the number of recycling station and recycling center that need to be built. The decrease of the service level of recycling station would make the number of recycling stations that need to be built increase for a while and later decrease, and make the number of recycling centers that need to be built increase. The variation of remanufacturing rate has little effect on the number of recycling stations and the number of recycling centers that need to be built. (2) The increase of recycle rate leads to the increase of fixed cost, variable cost and total cost. The increase of service level would make fixed cost increase for a while and later decrease, and make variable cost and total cost decrease. The increase of remanufacturing rate doesn’t have any effect on fixed cost, but would increase variable cost and total cost.Then, the paper studies a location routine problem in reverse supply chain with uncertain recycling quantity and given geographic coordinates of all facilities, and analyzes the influence of the uncertain recycling quantity on location and routine decisions. The paper gets some findings as follows:various scenarios lead to various quantities of waste cell phones that need to be recycled, and leads to various optimal location decisions, transportation routines and the quantities to be conveyed. Analyzing various possible future scenarios and making scientific contingency measures in advance will help to improve the adaptability and robustness of reverse supply chain network.Finally, the paper studies a location inventory problem in reverse supply chain when recycling quantity has a Poisson distribution, and analyses the influence of collection cycle, the maximum distance between recycling stations and certain consumer groups on location and maximum inventory. The paper gets some findings as follows:collection cycle has a large influence on location and maximum inventory in reverse supply chain design, while the maximum distance between recycling stations and certain consumer groups has little influence on location and maximum inventory in reverse supply chain design.