Inventory Control Model for Remanufacturing

The global demand for consumer electronic products has been phenomenal in the last two decades. The negative environmental effects of the growing consumption of electronic hardware are most visible in the end-of-life (EOL) stage. Remanufacturing is a viable option in electronic waste management as it reduces e waste generation and increases reuse of equipment and components. Inventory control in remanufacturing requires appropriate control mechanisms to integrate the return flow of used products with the material planning for the forward flow. The mechanism is different for remanufacturing or reuse, where used products are returned for introduction into the main production stream. In this case, returned goods are an additional inventory source to the usual inventory procured from outside. Moreover, this additional flow is not directly available to the manufacturer because of the unpredictable quantity, time and quality of products that will be returned from the customers. The paper aims at generating a mathematical model for minimizing the inventory cost by increasing the returns. This is done by controlling the return index by introducing two factors namely Customer behavior and service agreement with the customer. Keyword--remanufacturing, inventory, complexity, return