A Multiphase Fuzzy Logic Approach to Strategic Planning of a Reverse Supply Chain Network

Strategic planning (also called designing) is a challenging aspect of a reverse supply chain network. To effectively satisfy drivers such as profitability, environmental regulations, and asset recovery, only the most economical used products must be reprocessed in only the recovery facilities that have the potential to efficiently reprocess them. Due to uncertainties in supply, quality, and reprocessing times of used products, the cost-benefit function in the literature that selects the most economical product to reprocess from a set of used products is not appropriate for direct adoption. Moreover, due to the same uncertainties, any traditional forward supply chain approach to identify potential manufacturing facilities cannot be employed to identify potential recovery facilities. This paper proposes a three-phase fuzzy logic approach, taking the above uncertainties into account, to design a reverse supply chain network. Application of the approach is detailed through an illustrative example in each phase.