engleski

Basic Concepts in Reverse Logistics Network

In recent years, many companies have begun to pay attention to used products and materials, because of legislative, economic and commercial factors. Reduction of waste has become a major concern for all industrial. In addition to growing disposal costs, govern-mental legislation requires producers to take charge of their products throughout their life cycle. There are many reasons why products are returned, either by consumers or by the companies involved in the distribution chain. Retailers may return products because of damage in transit, expired date code, the model being discontinued or replaced, seasonality, excessive retailer inventories, retailer going out of business, etc. Reverse logistics is concerned with the return flows of products or equipment back from the costumer to the logistics network for reuse, recovery or recycling for enviromental, economic or customer service reasons. The return reasons are listed according the usual supply chain hierarchy, starting with manufacturing, next the wholesaler/retailers and finally the customers/consumers which in principle are going to use the products. Accordingly we differentiate manufacturing returns, distribution returns and customer/user returns.

distribution; reverse logistics; reduction of waste

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