Economical impact of RFID implementation in remanufacturing: a Chaos-based Interactive Artificial Bee Colony approach

In the modern manufacturing arena, environmental and economical concerns draw considerable attention from both practitioners and researchers towards remanufacturing practices. The success of remanufacturing firms depends on how efficiently the recovery process is executed. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology holds immense potential to enhance the recovery process. The deployment of RFID technology at reverse echelons has the advantage of having a real time system with reduced inventory shrinkage, reduced processing time, reduced labor cost, process accuracy, and other directly measurable benefits. In spite of these expected benefits, the heavy financial investment required in implementing the RFID system is a big threat for remanufacturing companies. This paper examines the economical impact of RFID adoption to remanufacturing. The aim of the research is to compare the basic and RFID-diffused reverse logistics model, and to quantitatively decide whether RFID implementation is economically viable. In order to meet these objectives, we have proposed a Chaos-based Interactive Artificial Bee Colony (CI-ABC) algorithm. Numerical results from using the CI-ABC for optimal performance are presented and analyzed. Comparison between the canonical Artificial Bee Colony and the Particle Swarm Optimization reveals the superiority of the CI-ABC for this application.