Reverse Supply Chain Management and Inventory Optimization in Retailing Environment
We consider a reverse supply chain in a closed-loop environment where there are multiple vendors, multiple warehouses, multiple stores and multiple distribution centers. Traditional supply chain structures, namely forward supply chains, consider material flows from few central locations (such as factories, plants, suppliers, vendors, etc.) to many demand points (such as warehouses, stores, customers, etc.) which have a divergent network structure. However, reverse supply chains consider material flow from many collection points (such as consumers, customers, refuse bins, collection points, stores, etc.) to few demand centers (such as suppliers, factories, plants, vendors) which have a convergent network structure. We design the problem as a mixed integer linear program and provide modelling and solution techniques and heuristics to provide faster solution times.