Track: Reverse Logistics and Green Systems

Abstract

Mobile production in India has already crossed the 100-million-units mark, and is set to touch 500 million in the next two years. Reverse supply chain logistics, means mobility of goods from end consumers towards core manufacturer in the channel of product distribution. In the turbulent business environment, the companies must promote alternative uses of resources that may be cost-effective and ecology friendly by extending products’ routine life cycles. Reveres logistics activities i.e. storing, transporting and handling of used products poses a great challenge to reverse logistics managers as there is always chances of uncertainty in terms of quantity, quality and timing of return of EOL products in case of reverse supply chains. In the present work problem related to recovery of used cell phones is formulated by various MCDM approaches namely MOORA (multi-objective optimization by ratio analysis), SWARA (step-wise weight assessment ratio) and WASPAS (weighted aggregated sum product assessment). SWARA method is used to find the criterion weight of alternative and the other methods such as MOORA and WASPAS is used to give the rankings of alternatives and chooses the best alternative from the rest. All known multi-attribute methods cannot value the attribute weights as one weight of attribute is higher or lower significant than the other attribute, SWARA allows expert opinion about significance ratio of the attributes in the process of rational decision determination. In WASPAS method, we combine the subjective weight expressed by decision makers with objective weights to obtain more realistic weights which help to increase the stability of the proposed approach. This approach is efficient and well consistent with other methods. MOORA method is a general method and can consider any number of quantitative and qualitative attributes simultaneously and offer a more objective and simple decision making-approach. The present approach links the financial and nonfinancial, tangible and intangible, internal and external factors, thus providing a holistic framework for the selection of an alternative for the reverse logistics operations for EOL cell phones. Many criteria, sub-criteria, determinants, etc. for the selection of reverse manufacturing options are interrelated. Thus, MCDM methods proposed in this paper provides a more realistic and accurate representation of the problem for conducting remanufacturing logistics operations for EOL cell phones in Indian business environment.