This article surveys the recently emerged field of reverse logistics. The management of return flows induced by the various forms of reuse of products and materials in industrial production processes has received growing attention throughout this decade. Many authors have proposed quantitative models taking those changes in the logistics environment into account. However, no general framework has been suggested yet. Therefore the time seems right for a systematic overview of the issues arising in the context of reverse logistics. In this paper we subdivide the field into three main areas, namely distribution planning, inventory control, and production planning. For each of these we discuss the implications of the emerging reuse efforts, review the mathematical models proposed in the literature, and point out the areas in need of further research. Special attention is paid to differences and/or similarities with classical 'forward' logistics methods.
In this paper we give an overview of applications of maintenance optimization models published so far. We analyze the role of these models in maintenance and discuss the factors which may have hampered applications. Finally, we discuss future prospects.
The worldwide economic growth of the last century has given rise to a vast consumption of goods while globalization has led to large streams of goods all over the world. The production, transportation, storage and consumption of all these goods, however, have created large environmental problems. Today, global warming, created by large scale emissions of greenhouse gasses, is a top environmental concern. Governments, action groups and companies are asking for measures to counter this threat. Operations research has a long tradition in improving operations and especially in reducing costs. In this paper, we present a review that highlights the contribution of operations research to green logistics, which involves the integration of environmental aspects in logistics. We give a sketch of the present and possible developments, focussing on design, planning and control in a supply chain for transportation, inventory of products and facility decisions. While doing this, we also indicate several areas where environmental aspects could be included in OR models for logistics.
VOS is a new mapping technique that can serve as an alternative to the well-known technique of multidimensional scaling (MDS). We present an extensive comparison between the use of MDS and the use of VOS for constructing bibliometric maps. In our theoretical analysis, we show the mathematical relation between the two techniques. In our empirical analysis, we use the techniques for constructing maps of authors, journals, and keywords. Two commonly used approaches to bibliometric mapping, both based on MDS, turn out to produce maps that suffer from artifacts. Maps constructed using VOS turn out not to have this problem. We conclude that in general maps constructed using VOS provide a more satisfactory representation of a dataset than maps constructed using well-known MDS approaches.
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