Closed-Loop Supply Chain Planning Model of Rare Metals

Abstract

Rare metals (RMs) are becoming increasingly important in high-tech industries associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, such as the electric vehicle (EV) and 3D printer industries. As the growth of these industries accelerates in the near future, manufacturers will also face greater RM supply risks. For this reason, many countries are putting considerable effort into securing the RM supply. For example, countries including Japan, Korea, and the USA have adopted two major policies: the stockpile system and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). Therefore, it is necessary for the manufacturers with RMs to establish a suitable supply chain plan that reflects this situation. In this study, the RM classification matrix is created based on the stockpile and recycling level in Korea. Accordingly, three different types of supply chain are designed in order to develop the closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) planning model of RM, and the CLSC planning models of RM are validated through experimental analysis. The results show that the stockpiling and the EPR recycling obligation increase the amount of recycled flow and reduce the total cost of the part manufacturing, which means that these two factors are significant for obtaining sustainability of the RMs' CLSC. In addition, the government needs to set an appropriate sharing cost for promoting the manufacturer's recycling. Also, from the manufacturer's perspective, it is better to increase the return rate by making a contract with the collectors to guarantee the collection of used products.

Closed Loop Supply Chain under Power Configurations and Dual Competitions

“…There is vast amount of research papers on closed loop supply chain [12][13][14]. We mainly focus on three streams of literature., i.e., forward competition, reverse competition, and channel power configuration, each of which is reviewed as follows.…”

Sustainable Closed-Loop Supply Chain Design Problem: A Hybrid Genetic Algorithm Approach

“…The economic factors considered include the maximization of the total profit or the minimization of the total cost resulting from construction and operation processes of the CLSC design problem [4][5][6][7][8]16,17,20,22]. Wang and Hsu [5] developed a CLSC design problem to minimize the total cost, which is the aggregate of the total production cost, the total transportation cost, and the total fixed cost.…”

“…CLSC design problems with the three types of distribution channels mentioned above have been considered in conventional literature [4,8,[13][14][15]. The CLSC design problem by Cardoso et al [14] consists of a plant, a warehouse, a retailer and a market.…”

“…The rest of the products at the warehouse are sent to the market via the DRD, without involving the retailer. The CLSC design problem by Son et al [8] consists of an external supplier, a pre-manufacturing processor, a parts manufacturer, an end-product manufacturer, and a customer in FL, and a collector, a recycler, and a disposal unit in RL. Certain materials and products are sent from one stage to the next via the NRD, some others are sent from the external supplier to the parts manufacturer via the DRD without involving the pre-manufacturing processors.…”

A Novel Two-Stage Integrated Model for Supplier Selection of Green Fresh Product

“…In view of the uncertainties and information limitations of the GSCM, fuzzy methods are used to select suppliers [8]. At the same time, due to the existence of qualitative and quantitative evaluation criteria [9][10][11], it is very necessary to establish a suitable and highly flexible supplier selection method [12][13][14][15].…”