154. Optimal Returned Policies for Multiple Products to Multiple Return Centers
Invited abstract in session TC-47: E-commerce, stream Retail Operations.
Tuesday, 12:30-14:00Room: Parkinson B08
Authors (first author is the speaker)
| 1. | Nizar Zaarour
|
| Supply Chain And Information Management, Northeastern University | |
| 2. | Emanuel Melachrinoudis
|
| Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Northeastern University |
Abstract
Product returns are an essential part of conducting business today, due to the emergence of e-commerce and the proliferation of generous return policies. Such policies, however, can backfire due to their costly operations and unpredictability. To minimize the adverse impact, we develop and compare different collection policies to minimize the combined inventory and transportation costs in a three-echelon network consisting of (a) customers returning products to initial collection points (ICPs), (b) the ICPs, and (c) the centralized return centers (CRCs), that receive the products shipped from the ICPs after they are aggregated into larger shipments to leverage economies of scale. Collection policies are developed for the case of multiple products with a single ICP and multiple CRCs, by using (1) individual shipment policy where ICPs ship out products to individual CRCs and (2) a combined shipment policy that allows shipping and routing from an ICP to multiple CRCs. Mathematical models are developed to determine the collection period at the ICPs to minimize the combined inventory and transportation costs for these policies. An efficient algorithm is developed, and results are presented with an experimental dataset.
Keywords
- Reverse Logistics / Remanufacturing
- Transportation
- Location
Status: accepted
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