A Web-Based Recommender System for end-of-use ICT Products

Abstract

Abstract:Original Equipment Manufacturers in the Information and Communication Technology sector have recently started to prioritize management of their returns for several reasons. Effective management of returns is a complicated problem due to the uncertainty related to the quantity, quality, timing and place of origin of returns. Exploring the case of end-of-use PCs, this paper describes a web-based system, namely Reverse Logistics Marketplace, in which the interested parties, delegate tasks related to management of returns to software agents, instead of carrying out physical operations. PC users, interested in returning their PCs or their parts, can access the e-marketplace using the PC in request and call for a "trusted-third-party" agent to perform configuration detection and benchmarking of their PC. Potential buyers can also access the e-marketplace to register their collection requests, regarding either complete PCs or modules of them. Advanced features of the system include the permanent existence of agents in the e-marketplace to learn from conducted transactions, their ability to act proactively to initiate a transaction, 602A Web-Based Recommender System and the integration of a multiple-criteria decision support tool that performs a comparative evaluation of the collection requests and recommends the optimal recovery option to the PC users.

A Framework to Analyze Cash Supply Chains

“…There have also been several practical studies of closed-loop supply chains as they are used for particular products: refrigerators (Krikke et al 2001), batter-ies (Schultmann et al 2003), electronic scrap (Spengler 2002), and PC's (Kokkinaki et al 2001). Additionally, some have been based on work with particular companies, including IBM (Fleischmann et al 2003), Agfa-Gevaert (Spengler and Schro ¨ter 2003), and Visteon (Kekre 2003).…”