Closed‐Loop Supply Chains: A Critical Review, and Future Research*

Abstract

In this article, I present a review and tutorial of the literature on closed-loop supply chains, which are supply chains where, in addition to typical forward flows, there are reverse flows of used products (postconsumer use) back to manufacturers. Examples include supply chains with consumer returns, leasing options, and end-of-use returns with remanufacturing. I classify the literature in terms of strategic, tactical, and operational issues, but I focus on strategic issues (such as when should an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) remanufacture, response to take-back legislation, and network design, among others) and tactical issues (used product acquisition and disposition decisions). The article is written in the form of a tutorial, where for each topic I present a base model with underlying assumptions and results, comment on extensions, and conclude with my view on needed research areas.

Strategic Grading in the Product Acquisition Process of a Reverse Supply Chain

“…Additionally, a close collaboration with a recommerce provider during this project yielded new insights into this fast developing industry. Thus, our research approach addresses the needs identified by Souza (2013) and Guide and Wassenhove (2009) as we consider a novel practice-driven problem setting and provide empirical results from an actual data set from the recommerce industry.…”

OM Forum—Sustainable Operations Management: An Enduring Stream or a Passing Fancy?

“…There are contributions in the other streams noted above that intersect with the CLSC literature through a focus on reuse, remanufacturing, and/or recycling (e.g., for sustainable technology choice work that intersects with CLSC, see Debo et al 2005; for sustainable product design work that intersects with CLSC, see Plambeck and Wang 2009, Atasu and Subramanian 2012, and Subramanian et al 2013. Souza (2013) provides a thorough tutorial and review of the closed-loop supply chain literature, whereas Guide and Van Wassenhove (2009) describe the stream's evolution.…”

Mean-Variance Analysis for Optimal Operation and Supply Chain Coordination in a Green Supply Chain

“…From social concerns about 3R (Reduce-ReuseRecycle) activity worldwide, it is urgently-needed to construct a new supply chain management which incorporates reverse chains/logistics into traditional forward chains/logistics (Guide and Wassenhove, 2009;Jayant et al, 2012;Souza, 2013;Govindan et al, 2014;Stindt and Sahamie, 2014;Schenkel et al, 2015;Radhi andZhang, 2016, Cannella et al, 2016). The traditional forward chains/logistics consist of the flows from procurement of new materials through production of new products to selling them.…”

“…The reverse chains/logistics are composed of the flows from collection of used products through recycling parts from the used products to reuse the recycled parts. Also, a supply chain which organizes the forward chains and the reverse chains has been called a closed-loop supply chain, a reverse supply chain, or a green supply chain (GSC) (Guide and Wassenhove, 2009;Souza, 2013;Govindan et al, 2014;Stindt and Sahamie, 2014;Bhattacharya and Kaur, 2015;Gurtu et al, 2015). A supply chain which is considered in this paper is called GSC in terms of greening effort/initiatives (Swami and Shah, 2013;Ghosh and Shah, 2015) in promoting collection activity of used products and remanufacturing activity.…”

“…For the above topics, many previous studies regarding a GSC determined the optimal operations in the GSC so as to maximize the expected profit or minimize the expected cost under the uncertainties (Schenkel et al, 2015). There are some overviews of above topics (Fleischmann et al, 1997;Guide and Wassenhove, 2009;Souza, 2013;Govindan et al, 2013;Stindt and Sahamie, 2014;Bazan et al, 2016: Thiripura Sundari andVijayalakshmi, 2016). However, only considering the expectation for decision-making is insufficient because it ignores the risk attitude of the decision makers (Choi et al, 2008a;Chiu and Choi, 2016).…”