388 research outputs found
Environmentally conscious manufacturing and product recovery (ECMPRO): A review of the state of the art
No full textGungor and Gupta [1999, Issues in environmentally conscious manufacturing and product recovery: a survey. Computers and Industrial Engineering, 36(4), 811-853] presented an important review of the development of research in Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing and Product Recovery (ECMPRO) and provided a state of the art survey of published work. However, that survey covered most papers published through 1998. Since then, a lot of activity has taken place in EMCPRO and several areas have become richer. Many new areas also have emerged. In this paper we primarily discuss the evolution of ECMPRO that has taken place in the last decade and discuss the new areas that have come into focus during this time. After presenting some background information, the paper systematically investigates the literature by classifying over 540 published references into four major categories, viz., environmentally conscious product design, reverse and closed-loop supply chains, remanufacturing, and disassembly. Finally, we conclude by summarizing the evolution of ECMPRO over the past decade together with the avenues for future research. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
A Critical Study of the Autobiographical Elements in the Fictional Works of R. K. Narayan
No full textNot availabl
A Pricing and Acquisition Strategy for New and Remanufactured High-Technology Products
No full textNew generations of high-technology products are frequently launched before the previous model is sold out. Customers have an incentive to end the use of their old product and purchase a new one with the latest technological innovations. The unsold old models become less attractive, while the supply of remanufactured products from end-of-use products is uncertain in time, quantity, and quality. Other than adjusting the price, upgrading the returning unsold new products may be a source of remedy. This study provides profit maximization models associated with customer choice demand functions based on manufacturer, retailer, and joint supply chain scenarios. Two acquisition strategies are compared: acquire end-of-use products only and collect both end-of-use products and unsold old-style new products. The results reveal that returning the optimal quantity of overstocked new products brings about a greater benefit in all scenarios. Compared to the remanufacturer, the retailer is the optimal undertaker for collecting used products. In addition to this, slow technological development of the new-generation model causes a decrease in profit for the manufacturer. The optimal quantity of new products to be bought back decreases, because both the manufacturer and the retailer prefer to promote unsold outmoded products rather than upgrade the used products
Designing a Sustainable Green Closed-Loop Supply Chain under Uncertainty and Various Capacity Levels
No full textThe ever-increasing concerns of the growth in the volume of waste tires and new strict government legislations to reduce the environmental impact of the end-of-life (EOL) tires have increased interest among companies to design a sustainable and efficient closed-loop supply-chain (CLSC) network. In the real world, the CLSC network design is subject to a variety of uncertainties, such as random and fuzzy (epistemic) uncertainties. Designing a reliable and environmentally cautious CLSC with consideration of risks and the uncertainty of the parameters in the network is necessary for a successful supply-chain network. This study proposes a sustainable and environmentally cautious closed-loop supply-chain network for the tire industry, by considering several recovery options, including retreading, recycling, and energy recovery. This study aims to design and develop a robust multi-objective, multi-product, multi-echelon, multi-cycle, multi-capacity, green closed-loop supply-chain network under hybrid uncertainty. There are two types of uncertainties associated with the parameters in the network. There is an uncertainty associated with the demand, which is expressed in some future scenarios according to the probability of their occurrences, as well as fuzzy-based uncertainty associated with return rates, retreading rates, recycling rates, procurement, and production costs, which are expressed with possibilistic distributions. In order to deal with this hybrid uncertainty, a robust fuzzy stochastic programming approach has been proposed, and the proposed mixed integer programming model is applied to a case study in the tire industry to validate the model. The result indicates the applicability of the proposed model and its efficiency to control the hybrid uncertainties and the risk level in the network
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No full textCopyright 2001 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibited.The current trend of depletion of natural resources due to an ever-increasing number of consumer goods manufactured has led to an increase in the quantity of used and outdated products discarded. From an environmental point of view, it is not only desirable to disassemble, reuse, remanufacture and/or recycle the discarded products, in many cases it can also be economically justified. This situation being the motive, in recent years there have been several studies reported on disassembly, remanufacturing and/or recycling environments. Since “environmentally conscious manufacturing" is a relatively new concept that brings new costs and profits into consideration, its analysis cannot be provided by readily available techniques. This paper presents a quantitative methodology to determine the allowable tolerance limits of planned/unplanned inventory in a remanufacturing supply chain environment based on the decision-maker’s unique preferences. To this end, an integer goal-programming model that provides a unique solution for the allowable inventory level is presented. The objective of the supply-chain model is to determine the number of a variety of components to be kept in the inventory while economically fulfilling the demand of a multitude of components, and yet have an environmentally benign policy of minimizing waste generation.A numerical example is presented to illustrate the methodology.http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.41726
Optimizing Two-Dimensional Renewable Warranty Policies for Sensor Embedded Remanufactured Products
No full textPurpose: Remanufactured products, in addition to being environment friendly, are popular with
consumers because they can offer the latest technology with lower prices in comparison to brand
new products. However, some consumers are hesitant to buy remanufactured products because
they are skeptical about the quality of the remanufactured product and thus are unsure of the
extent to which the product will render services when compared to a new product. A strategy that
remanufacturers may employ to entice customers is to offer warranties on remanufactured
products. To that end, this paper studies and scrutinizes the impact of offering renewing
warranties on remanufactured products. Specifically, the paper suggests a methodology which
simultaneously minimizes the cost incurred by the remanufacturers and maximizes the confidence
of the consumers towards buying remanufacturing products.
Design/methodology/approach: This study uses discrete-event simulation to optimize the
implementation of a two-dimensional renewing warranty policy for remanufactured products.
The implementation is illustrated using a specific product recovery system called the Advanced
Remanufacturing-To-Order (ARTO) system. The experiments used in the study were designed
using Taguchi’s Orthogonal Arrays to represent the entire domain of the recovery system so as to
observe the system behavior under various experimental conditions. In order to determine the
optimum strategy offered by the remanufacturer, various warranty and preventive maintenance scenarios were analyzed using pairwise t-tests along with one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA)
and Tukey pairwise comparisons tests for every scenario.
Findings: The proposed methodology is able to simultaneously minimize the cost incurred by
the remanufacturer, optimize the warranty price and period, and optimize the preventive
maintenance strategy resulting in increased consumer confidence.
Originality/value: This is the first study that evaluates in a quantitative and comprehensive
manner the potential benefits of offering warranties with preventive maintenance on
remanufactured products
Evaluation of Maintenance and EOL Operation Performance of Sensor-Embedded Laptops
No full textSensors are commonly employed to monitor products during their life cycles and to remotely and continuously track their usage patterns. Installing sensors into products can help generate useful data related to the conditions of products and their components, and this information can subsequently be used to inform EOL decision-making. As such, embedded sensors can enhance the performance of EOL product processing operations. The information collected by the sensors can also be used to estimate and predict product failures, thereby helping to improve maintenance operations. This paper describes a study in which system maintenance and EOL processes were combined and closed-loop supply chain systems were constructed to analyze the financial contribution that sensors can make to these procedures by using discrete event simulation to model and compare regular systems and sensor-embedded systems. The factors that had an impact on the performance measures, such as disassembly cost, maintenance cost, inspection cost, sales revenues, and profitability, were determined and a design of experiments study was carried out. The experiment results were compared, and pairwise t-tests were executed. The results reveal that sensor-embedded systems are significantly superior to regular systems in terms of the identified performance measures
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