Reverse logistics practices and operational performance of firms in the manufacturing sector: A systematic review

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to present the literature on the impact of reverse logistics (RL) practices on operational performance (OP). The Kitchenham and Charters' guidelines served as the direction for this review process. The study used articles that were posted on Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science, Emerald, and ProQuest between 2017 and The study findings revealed that a sizeable number of countries were conducted in countries like Malawi, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, and Pakistan. Although prior research conducted in numerous countries generally agree that reverse logistics generally improves a business's operational performance, they did not specifically narrow down to focus on isolated reverse logistics practices such as re-use, recycling and remanufacturing and their direct impact of operational performance. Additionally, some studies failed to pay much attention to the beverage manufacturing industry in favour of focusing on the fast-moving goods. Moreover, most studies only examined practices for reusing and recycling materials while ignoring other reverse logistics strategies in the industry of beverage manufacturing. Therefore, future studies should focus on the beverage manufacturing firms and assess how beverage manufacturing firms manage their reverse logistics operations as well as its impact on operational performance. In addition to reuse and recycling practices, future studies should concentrate on other reverse logistics practices such as return, remanufacturing, and repackaging, as well as factors that affect both reverse logistics and operational performance as these factors were not fully addressed by previous studies to understand how much operational performance is affected by the adoption of reverse logistics.