Inventory Management of Remanufacturable Products

Top Cited Papers

1 November 2000

journal article
Published by Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) in Management Science

Vol. 46 (11) , 1412-1426
https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.46.11.1412.12082

Abstract

We address the procurement of new components for recyclable products in the context of Kodak's single-use camera. The objective is to find an ordering policy that minimizes the total expected procurement, inventory holding, and lost sales cost. Distinguishing characteristics of the system are the uncertainty and unobservability associated with return flows of used cameras. We model the system as a closed queueing network, develop a heuristic procedure for adaptive estimation and control, and illustrate our methods with disguised data from Kodak. Using this framework, we investigate the effects of various system characteristics such as informational structure, procurement delay, demand rate, and length of the product's life cycle.

Keywords

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