Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 16.4
A closed-loop supply chain network
A distinguishing feature of RLND problems is that various sources of uncertainty
in supply arise at the upper echelon facilities (e.g., uncertainty in the amount and
in the quality of returned products). There are some studies addressing uncertainty
issues in the context of RLND such as Realff et al. (
2004
), Listes and Dekker (
2005
),
Liste¸s(
2007
), Salema et al. (
2007
), El-Sayed et al. (
2010
), and Fonseca et al. (
2010
).
As discussed at the beginning of Sect.
16.3
, major driving forces in reverse
logistics networks include not only economical factors, but also legislations and
environmental consciousness. Thus, in addition to the actors involved in forward
logistics networks, actors such as municipalities, foundations, third-party logistics
providers, and disposers, are involved in designing and operating reverse logistics
networks. Multiple actors lead to decision problems with multiple objectives. Even
though there are some studies that consider the multi-objective nature of this design
problem (e.g., Pati et al.
2008
, Fonseca et al.
2010
, Tari and Alumur
2014
), this
issue requires further attention.
For other extensions and special cases on RLND, the interested reader is referred
to the reviews by Fleischmann et al. (
2004
), Bostel et al. (
2005
), Akçalı et al. (
2009
),
and Aras et al. (
2010
).
16.4
Applications
The aim of this section is to demonstrate the richness in LND through presenting
applications from various areas including organ transportation in addition to
classical areas. The general form of the models described in Sects.
16.2
and
16.3
