9634914 Uzsoy As both environmental awareness and regulation increase in many countries, industry is considering recovering products at the end of their useful life for remanufacturing into new products or to reuse and recycle materials and components, thereby significantly increasing the problem of coordinating a company's supply chain. The goal of this research is to provide solutions to supply chain coordination and design problems encountered by companies with product recovery operations. The investigator will develop supply chain models that include recovery of returned products, disassembly, remanufacturing, purchasing of new components, assembly, and distribution. These models are formulated as linear programs, and the research involves the development of specialized solution procedures for these models. While these models are intended to be used for supply chain operation once the basic topology of the supply chain is given, the investigator will also develop models to support the longer-term issues of supply chain design. Although much research has been directed toward designing environmentally benign products and processes, the economic viability of remanufacturing and recycling schemes is also affected by the design and control of the logistics and production systems in which they are realized. This research addresses a strong need for model-based decision support tools for these systems, with high potential impact on their economic viability. Increased economic viability of these systems will contribute to more widespread adoption of remanufacturing and recycling, with benefits not only to the environment but to the economy as a whole.
