Track: Logistics Management

Abstract

Pick-up operations from the vendors is unidirectional supply chain in E-commerce industry in majority of the companies. But resources that are used travel in both directions to arrive at source point again. Similar phenomenon can be seen with delivery operations of return shipments to vendors. When one direction of the supply chain is not adding the value, cost of the shipments handled will be higher due to utilization inefficiency.

This paper explains the design of the bi-directional supply chain, how bi-directional supply chain increases the utilization of resources, design of operations at pickup center to increase utilization of infrastructure. It also emphasizes on dependencies which need focus from both forward and reverse point of view rather than solving for one direction in view. Cost, Speed and Reliability are considered for evaluation and comparison in this paper. Conclusions of the paper are made with aim at increasing the utilization of the fixed and variable resources.