November 2, 2012

Speaker: Saman Hassanzadeh Amin, Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, University of Windsor

Title: Design and Optimization of Closed-Loop Supply Chain Management

Abstract: Because of cost and environmental concerns, reverse supply chain (RSC) has received a lot of attention. RSC is defined as the activities of the collection and recovery of product returns in supply chain management. The integration of forward supply chain (FSC) and RSC results in a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC). In this talk, FSC, RSC, and CLSC are introduced. Then, four CLSC problems and related mathematical solution approaches are discussed. We have developed methodologies to examine impacts of multi-objectives, and uncertainty on CLSC networks.

In the first Section, a capacitated facility location model has been proposed for a CLSC network including multiple plants, demand markets, collection centres, and products. This research is among the first investigations that consider multi-objective mathematical models under uncertainty in CLSC network configuration. In the second Section, an integrated mathematical model for supplier selection, order allocation, and closed-loop network configuration has been proposed for a CLSC. To our knowledge, the proposed model is the first one that takes into account supplier selection, order allocation, and CLSC network configuration at the same time. In the third Section, a three-stage model has been proposed for a CLSC. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed model is among the first investigations in the literature that explores the selection process and CLSC configuration simultaneously and in an uncertain environment. In the fourth Section, we propose a novel mathematical model to optimize a closed-loop network. To our knowledge, before this research no investigation has examined a general network for return-recovery pairs including commercial, end of life, and end of use returns.