Research On Supply Chain Optimization Considering Uncertainty Of RTI Returning

At present,circular economy is one of the important approaches to promote the sustainability of economic and social development.And packaging recycling plays an important role in promoting the development of circular economy because it can reduce the packaging material consumption and waste generation.For enterprises,reutilizing packaging can generate a plenty of benefits,such as decreasing packaging cost,improving standardization and facilitating packaging integrated management.On the other hand,enterprises may also suffer losses in packaging reutilization due to improper management.Therefore,how to optimize the management of RTI(returnable transport items)is a problem worth studying.Nevertheless,there are various of uncertainties in the processes of purchasing,returning and maintaining of RIT,which increases the difficulty of the managing the RTI supply chain.In addition,management decision for RTI is tightly associated and interacted with that for product.And this relationship should be considered in the optimization management of RTI supply chain.Therefore,from the global perspective of product and RTI supply chain,the joint optimization management of products and RTI considering the influence of uncertain factors will be the focus of this work.Specifically,from the perspective of the whole supply chain,this paper studied the joint optimization problem of product and packaging under uncertain circumstances.The tight relationship between product and packaging is analyzed,which is beneficial to the integrated management.Minimization of the total cost is the overall objective to avoid the game between companies within the supply chain.And the impact of uncertainty on joint optimization of product and packaging is considered,so it is closer to the practice.The main contents of this paper are as follows:(1)This paper summarizes the major uncertainties existing in the closed-loop supply chain and the impact of these uncertainties on supply chain is analyzed.Also,the close relationship between product and reusable packaging is analyzed,including the interaction between product quantity and package quantity,and the correlation between product delivery cycle and packaging returning cycle.(2)Considering the whole supply chain,this paper,at first,established joint optimization model of product and packaging.In the models,the impact of return time uncertainty and reutilization rate uncertainty is respectively considered and the cost compositions,namely production cost,customer’s order cost,packaging returning cost,inventory holding costs of packaging and products at suppliers and customers,customer’s out-of-stock costs,purchase costs of new packaging,etc.,are discussed under different situation.And the weight of cost under each situation is determined.Afterward,the optimal results,namely production cycle and delivery cycle,shipment volume,and packaging return batch and recycling cycles,packaging safety stocks are obtained through genetic algorithm.Then,based on the data from enterprises,product and packaging management in Company A is optimized via the models.Last but not least,the influence of the return time and reutilization rate of packaging on the costs of supply chain are analyzed.