Abstract

In recent years, the sales of consumer electronics have increased rapidly. Manufacturers introduce the state of the art technologies in quick succession. As a result, the volume of the returned end-of-life (EOL) products has grown significantly. Often these EOL products are still in excellent working conditions (functional). Customers return them because various marketing programs create an aura of must have sense in the minds of customers or because of the favorable incentives offered by service providers or manufacturers to acquire upgraded products. Thus, disassembly facilities are often faced with an overwhelming number of returns that is beyond the actual demand of these items. The appropriate management of the reverse supply chain, specifically in terms of inventory control, then becomes more complicated. In this paper, we address the issue of managing the inventory generated in the disassembly facility that is beyond the forecasted demand and propose an inventory control model to minimize its impact. An example is considered to illustrate the approach.

Notes

Originally published in the Proceedings of the 2008 Northeast Decision Sciences Institute Conference, Brooklyn, New York, March 28-30, 2008 (CD-ROM)

Keywords

consumer electronics, supply chain management, End of life products

Subject Categories

Recycling (Waste (etc.))

Disciplines

Engineering

Publisher

Omnipress

Publication Date

2008

Rights Information

Copyright 2008, Surendra M. Gupta

Rights Holder

Gupta M. Surendra


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