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In view of the uncertainty regarding consumers' perceived value of remanufactured products, a remanufacturing supply chain system with the manufacturer as the Stackelberg leader is constructed, in which the manufacturer faces three modes, namely the manufacturer recycling mode (M), the retailer recycling mode (R), and the entrusted third-party recycling mode (3P). The remanufacturing supply chain is analyzed using the game theory approach in these three recycling modes. Using game theory to analyze the optimal pricing and profits of each supply chain participant, we also discuss the impact of consumers' perceived value uncertainty on the profits of each party under the different recycling modes, and we then explore the selection of recycling channels in the remanufacturing supply chain. The results show that when the perceived value uncertainty is at a medium or low level, retailers are responsible for recycling used products and producing remanufactured products, which brings higher profits to the supply chain system; when the perceived value uncertainty is high, the demand for remanufactured products in the market decreases, and the recycling revenue of remanufactured products is lower. Finally, the validity of the theoretical model is verified by a numerical simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines market entrance and pricing strategies for a remanufacturer with capital constraint and competition from an original equipment manufacturer. In the study, the remanufacturer is divided into two types, namely the H-type and L-type, and is assumed to have access to bank loans and equity financing to ease the capital constraint. With the Nash game, it is found that (i) if remanufacturing is costly, the remanufacturer will choose partial remanufacturing and not enter into the remanufacturing market until the equity financing ratio excesses a certain threshold. (ii) A H-type remanufacturer is more flexible in term of market entrance than a L-type remanufacturer. (iii) The remanufacturer's profit increases first and then decreases in the equity ratio. (iv) Equity ratio and interest rate have opposite effects on the pricing of the new and remanufactured products. Furthermore, with some research extensions, it is exhibited that the results and managerial implications developed in the paper hold well for different financing modes and the random demand setting, and hence are robust to a good extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many supply chain (SC) firms use remanufacturing operations to save costs, but they often face insufficient funds. We consider that remanufacturers with insufficient funds can obtain financing through two methods: bank financing (BF) and retailer financing (RF). This paper considers a SC that implements a Trade-Old-for-Remanufactured (TOR) program, and studies the impacts of financing strategies and the government policy on the SC. By analyzing the optimal solutions of SC and members in different situations, we can find the following results: (i) No competition leads to higher total profits than the competition case. (ii) TOR program will cannibalize new product demand, but it has a positive impact on the total sales volume of new and remanufactured products. (iii) Higher rebate ratio and larger subsidy will increase the total sales quantities of two products and improve the total profits of the SC. (iv) With the same government subsidies, the profit of the remanufacturer under RF strategy is higher than that under BF strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the emergence of a large number of waste electronic products and the enhancement of social awareness of environmental protection, the recycling of waste electronic products has become one of the pressing issues of social concern. Government environmental regulation is an important policy to promote the development of the remanufacturing industry. In this paper, we study the government levies recycling and disposal fees on original products for environmental governance and establish two game models based on the perspective of maximizing social welfare with no government regulation and a tripartite liability system. The optimal decisions on wholesale, retail prices and quantity of original and remanufactured products, as well as the recycling and disposal fee are analyzed under both models. Based on the numerical results, the impact of the main parameter (such as the responsibility sharing ratio) on the decisions and profits of the parties is discussed. The results show that (1) the wholesale and retail prices of remanufactured products are not affected by government regulation; (2) the tripartite liability system can increase the output of remanufactured products and reduce the output of original products while cutting the profits of remanufacturing supply chain members, and increasing social welfare; (3) government's optimal recycling and disposal fee is not related to the sharing ratio. The study can provide practitioners with suggestions for ways to develop environmental regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to limited resources and meager profits, collectors have insufficient motivation to fulfill their responsibilities, resulting in severe secondary pollution in the recycling process. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on the interests of collectors to motivate them to fulfill their solid waste management (SWM) responsibilities better. This paper focuses on remanufacturers' altruistic behavior in the context of collectors' compliance. Based on the Stackelberg game method, this paper constructs decision-making models for remanufacturers concerned or not concerned about the interests of collectors and compares the optimal decision-making outcomes of each model. The study finds that (1) based on remanufacturers' altruistic concerns, a coordination mechanism for sharing responsibility-fulfilling costs for collectors can motivate them to fulfill their responsibilities and improve the performance of the remanufacturing supply chain. (2) The proportion of the remanufacturer's share of the responsibility cost for the collector should not be too low, which is not conducive to encouraging the collector to fulfill the responsibility. However, the sharing proportion should not be too high, as this will increase the burden on the remanufacturer. This paper demonstrates the applicability of remanufacturers to moderately share responsibility costs for collectors to incentivize collectors to fulfill their responsibilities. The findings bridge the gap in research on SWM in remanufacturing supply chains. The management insights from this paper are expected to help remanufacturing supply chain companies establish a reuse behavior model that addresses the challenges that SWM faces to improve remanufacturing supply chain performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remanufacturing is a sustainable product reutilization strategy to realize responsible consumption and production. However, it has remained a largely untapped opportunity for enhancing productivity due to some behavioral matters such as fairness concerns of remanufacturing related firms. Concerning the emerging and development of remanufacturing industry, this paper provides a game-theoretic analysis for a remanufacturing supply chain (RSC) consisting of one leading manufacturer and a following retailer, with the inclusion of fairness concern. We propose and compare several scenarios of channel members' fairness preferences as, both members are fairness concerned, only one member is fairness concerned, and both members are fair neutral, to expound how fairness concern affects RSC strategies and resulting utilities. We also demonstrate dynamic evolution and stable state of channel members' selections of whether being fairness concerned in the long term. Analytical results show that favorable scenarios for the RSC to achieve desired objective are relevant to its preference for improved supply chain performance or enhanced environmental benefit. Whatever the preference is, however, it is detrimental for both members to be fairness concerned in the short term. In the long term, evolutionary stable strategies of fairness concerns indicate that both members or only one member would choose to be fairness concerned. The eventual status relies on the initial state of fairness preference. The results are especially relevant as a reference for remanufacturing related strategies, thus enhancing production sustainability as well as environmental benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this research is to identify and rank the solutions to mitigate the sustainable remanufacturing supply chain (RSC) risks effectively. Risks and the solutions are identified based on a literature survey and discussion with the expert’s panel. A hybrid multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) framework using fuzzy step-wise weight assessment ratio analysis (SWARA) and fuzzy complex proportional assessment of alternatives (COPRAS) is applied to analyse the risks and the solutions. Fuzzy SWARA is used to obtain relative weights of each risk and fuzzy COPRAS is used to rank and select the most efficient solution to manage the risks. The proposed framework was numerically applied to a case organisation involved in manufacturing/remanufacturing activities. The results indicate that initiatives from the management and modification in organisation goals is the top-ranked solution that would mitigate the majority of risks. Government, manufacturer and distributor collaboration to develop action plans and setting up international standards are also prominent solutions to overcome the risks. Further, this research performs a sensitivity analysis to check the robustness of the proposed fuzzy SWARA-fuzzy COPRAS framework. The findings and implications of this research will help the practitioners and researchers for decision-making in RSC.

With the emergence of a large number of waste electronic products and the enhancement of social awareness of environmental protection, the recycling of waste electronic products has become one of the pressing issues of social concern. Government environmental regulation is an important policy to promote the development of the remanufacturing industry. In this paper, we study the government levies recycling and disposal fees on original products for environmental governance and establish two game models based on the perspective of maximizing social welfare with no government regulation and a tripartite liability system. The optimal decisions on wholesale, retail prices and quantity of original and remanufactured products, as well as the recycling and disposal fee are analyzed under both models. Based on the numerical results, the impact of the main parameter (such as the responsibility sharing ratio) on the decisions and profits of the parties is discussed. The results show that (1) the wholesale and retail prices of remanufactured products are not affected by government regulation; (2) the tripartite liability system can increase the output of remanufactured products and reduce the output of original products while cutting the profits of remanufacturing supply chain members, and increasing social welfare; (3) government’s optimal recycling and disposal fee is not related to the sharing ratio. The study can provide practitioners with suggestions for ways to develop environmental regulation.

In this paper, we consider a two-period competition model of a remanufacturing supply chain consisting of three members: a new product manufacturer, a recycler and a remanufacturer. The manufacturer supplies new products in the first period and the remanufacturer participates in the competition in the second period. We consider three scenarios in the second period: (1) there is no government subsidy in the competition; (2) there is only government subsidy in the competition; (3) there are both government subsidy and tax in the competition. First, we give the optimal decision-making of the manufacturer, the remanufacturer and the government in the three scenarios; second, we analyse changes in the decision-making of the manufacturer and remanufacturer in the three scenarios and compare their results. We analyse the effects of government subsidy and tax and their asymmetric use on manufacturers’ and remanufacturers’ decision-making variables and competitive performance. We also take consumer awareness of environmental protection into account and examine its impact on subjects’ decisions. Lastly, we operate a numerical example to show the results.

The objective of this research is to identify and rank the solutions to mitigate the sustainable remanufacturing supply chain (RSC) risks effectively. Risks and the solutions are identified based on a literature survey and discussion with the expert's panel. A hybrid multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) framework using fuzzy step-wise weight assessment ratio analysis (SWARA) and fuzzy complex proportional assessment of alternatives (COPRAS) is applied to analyse the risks and the solutions. Fuzzy SWARA is used to obtain relative weights of each risk and fuzzy COPRAS is used to rank and select the most efficient solution to manage the risks. The proposed framework was numerically applied to a case organisation involved in manufacturing/remanufacturing activities. The results indicate that initiatives from the management and modification in organisation goals is the top-ranked solution that would mitigate the majority of risks. Government, manufacturer and distributor collaboration to develop action plans and setting up international standards are also prominent solutions to overcome the risks. Further, this research performs a sensitivity analysis to check the robustness of the proposed fuzzy SWARA-fuzzy COPRAS framework. The findings and implications of this research will help the practitioners and researchers for decision-making in RSC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Remanufacturing as a cleaner-production means has attracted much attention because of its great potential benefits in economics and ecology. This study introduces a new two-echelon remanufacturing supply chain motivated by the practice. Different from the existing research, interactive production constraints (IPCs) are involved between a manufacturer's and a core remanufacturer's production. In this supply chain, the manufacturer produces new and remanufactured products, whereas the core remanufacturer recycles used products and makes remanufactured cores. A four-step Stackelberg game model is developed to investigate the two firms' interactive decisions with IPCs. Analytical results show that, the core remanufacturer cannot fully satisfy the manufacturer's demand with adequate remanufactured cores when the transaction price is at a low level, conversely, the manufacturer can not accept all remanufactured cores that the core remanufacturer is supplying due to IPCs. IPCs significantly influence the firms' decisions and the supply chain's performance. To improve the supply chain's performance, we propose a cross-advertisement policy that offers the firms with initiatives on interactive decisions when facing IPCs. We find that either the manufacturer's environmental advertisements on used-product returns or the core remanufacturer's environmental advertisements on remanufactured-product consumption can benefit the two firms in terms of profits and the supply chain in terms of environmental performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider a two-period competition model of a remanufacturing supply chain consisting of three members: a new product manufacturer, a recycler and a remanufacturer. The manufacturer supplies new products in the first period and the remanufacturer participates in the competition in the second period. We consider three scenarios in the second period: (1) there is no government subsidy in the competition; (2) there is only government subsidy in the competition; (3) there are both government subsidy and tax in the competition. First, we give the optimal decision-making of the manufacturer, the remanufacturer and the government in the three scenarios; second, we analyse changes in the decision-making of the manufacturer and remanufacturer in the three scenarios and compare their results. We analyse the effects of government subsidy and tax and their asymmetric use on manufacturers' and remanufacturers' decision-making variables and competitive performance. We also take consumer awareness of environmental protection into account and examine its impact on subjects' decisions. Lastly, we operate a numerical example to show the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The remanufacturing of end-of-use textile and apparel (T&A) products can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and remanufacturing by third-party remanufacturers (TPRs) is one of the most common remanufacturing models. Governments have incentivized companies to remanufacture discarded T&A products and subsidize them by enacting diverse policies, but these subsidies often lag behind upfront investments, and several TPRs in this industry often confront financial constraints and need to seek financing. Along this line, we have established a T&A remanufacturing supply chain that includes a well-funded Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), which manufactures and sells new T&A products, and a capital-constrained TPR, which is licensed by the OEM to remanufactures end-of-use T&A products. OEM financing and subsidy-based confirmation financing, are considered on top of the benchmark model without financing to the TPR. The results of the research show that initial operating capital level and unit remanufacturing cost are two key factors influencing the choice of TPR financing. When the initial operating capital shortfall is small, it is more advantageous for the TPR to cut down production accordingly by maxing out her in-house capital rather than to obtain loan from a well-funded OEM or bank. When TPR's unit remanufacturing cost is low, it is advisable for TPR to secure a loan from the bank (OEM) under moderate (low) capital shortfall. When the unit remanufacturing cost of TPR is moderate, OEM financing becomes a preferable option for the TPR if its capital shortfall is relatively large. • We establish a T&A remanufacturing supply chain comprising a well-funded OEM and a capital constrained TPR. • We consider OEM and subsidy-based confirmation financing models on top of no financing benchmark model. • We conduct sensitive analysis, operational decisions and profit comparisons in three models. • We identify the conditions under which the TPR seeks financing from the OEM or bank. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

End-of-life (EOL) objects such as tyres have been categorised as hazardous to the environment due to heavy metals and chemicals. To manage the recovery and remanufacturing operations of these EOL items, an effective network design is necessary. In this paper, we developed a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model to minimize the total cost of the proposed EOL tyre remanufacturing supply chain network. Since, the problem is Non-deterministic Polynomial time hardness (NP-hard) in nature, we propose a prediction model that evaluates the operational feasibility of vehicle allocation and an evolutionary algorithm-based technique is employed to identify optimal facility locations, material flows among facilities, and demand distribution to individual automobiles for near-optimal solutions. Numerical experiments were conducted on a leading tyre remanufacturing company as a case study, and the results were compared with several evolutionary algorithms found that the Modified Genetic Algorithm (MGA) outperforms other algorithms. We demonstrate how, in each case, an optimal cost-effective location for a factory is found based on the cost and demand of the products. The study findings can assist governments and industry stakeholders in developing successful EOL tyre management strategies. • End-of-life (EOL) tyre remanufacturing supply chain network design was developed. • A Mixed Integer Linear Programming model for EOL tyre remanufacturing unit. • A novel prediction and optimization approach has been proposed. • Evolutionary approaches are studied where Modified Genetic Algorithm outperformed. • Based on a real case, experiments conducted to obtain near-optimal results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The market fluctuation, usually caused by macro-economic shrinking/boom and ever-changing consumers' preferences/acceptance, brings a high managing challenge for remanufacturers and retailers’ collection efforts and their coordination activities. Besides increasing profit, a market strategy also aims to reduce risk, i.e., profit variations. Thus, apart from the “maximum-profit” marketing strategy, this study tries to explore a risk-averse marketing strategy for a remanufacturer and a retailer in a remanufacturing supply chain. The proposed strategy satisfies the need of reducing risk of shortage/inventory under heavy remanufacturing market fluctuation. By adding the risk-averse factor into objective functions and using a concept of risk tolerance as a risk measurement, this paper investigates the effect of risk attitude for the remanufacturer and the retailer on remanufacturing quantity, expected profit and coordination activities. This paper finds that the proposed risk-averse marketing strategy brings more profit for both the remanufacturers and retailers than that for the “maximum-profit” marketing strategy in a heavier market fluctuation environment. Further, a coordination mechanism with risk attitude is designed and certain conditions are identified for inspiring the remanufacturer and the retailer to participate in supply chain contract coordination, which is of use for remanufacturing practitioners as well as academics. When the remanufacturer and the retailer develop their remanufacturing supply chain contracts in a heavier market fluctuation environment, the proposed strategy succeeds in balancing the expectation of benefits and the risk of market fluctuation. A truck engine remanufacturing case demonstrates that the risk-averse marketing strategy is relatively insensitive to market fluctuation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers a remanufacturing supply chain where a manufacturer adopts the dual collecting channels to recycle the used products. In order to analyze the optimal choice of collecting channel, the optimal pricing and collecting effort decisions, we establish two models by considering the collecting channels competition and obtain their corresponding analytical solutions. Through analysis and comparison of the results obtained in this paper and the existing references, some interesting and new insights are derived. For example, (1) the manufacturer's best action for collecting used products is to insure the retailer is engaged in collecting used products regardless of adopting single collecting channel or dual collecting channels; (2) the manufacturer's best choice, in order to improve environmental performance, increase used-product collection quantity, is to adopt dual collecting channels; (3) counter-intuitively, although the intensity of competition between the dual collecting channels affects the new product's optimal wholesale price and optimal retail price, it does not affect the order of the optimal collection effort of the whole supply chain in the models established in this paper and in Savaskan et al. (2004) and Huang et al. (2013). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an effective mode for resource recovery, remanufacturing has been widely recognized in practice and academia. However, coordination is needed and multi-uncertainties exist in a remanufacturing supply chain (RSC). Under a retailer collection mode, this paper extends the existing studies on a revenue-sharing mechanism for a forward supply chain to examine how to coordinate a RSC between a remanufacturer and a retailer by developing a mathematical model. This model considers two types of uncertainties, they are, the stochastic remanufacturability rate from the supply side of used products and the random demand occurring in remarketing of remanufactured products. This study fills the research gap on RSC coordination under the multi-uncertainty environment. Moreover, it introduces an iterative algorithm (the Newton-Raphson Method) to deal with difficulty in solving the implicit function of the payment to consumers under the non-uniform demand distribution by finding the approximate value. The research results show that a revenue-sharing contract for a RSC with multi-uncertainties can increase profit for the whole RSC as well as the remanufacturer and the retailer by eliminating double marginalization. Besides, the government subsidy to the remanufacturer can motivate the retailer to collect more used products under a revenue-sharing case since the retailer can share benefits of the whole RSC. A case study of remanufactured truck engines demonstrates benefits of the proposed revenue-sharing mechanism and the profit increase for the whole RSC with the government subsidy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Selection of remanufacturing modes in a supply chain with blockchain is analyzed. • The remanufcturer only chooses the competition mode with exogenous patent license fee. • The manufacuturer may choose the cooperation or competition mode. • The brand advantage only affects the manufacturer's mode selection. • Blockchain affects both the manufacturer's and the remanufacturer's mode selections. Remanufacturers often sell remanufactured products via their own channels (i.e., competition mode) or manufacturers' channels with brand advantage (i.e., cooperation mode). Besides, blockchain improves consumers' perceived quality of remanufactured products by alleviating their concerns. We develop game models by considering the influences of brand advantage and blockchain. Findings show that the brand advantage has critical effects on the manufacturer's mode selection except for the remanufacturer, but blockchain influences both of their selections. Moreover, the remanufacturer may choose either cooperation or competition when the patent license fee is exogenous, but will only choose cooperation when the patent license fee is endogenous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we address the problem of choosing an appropriate channel for the marketing channel structure of remanufactured fashion products. To be specific, we consider a remanufacturer who has two options for selling the products: (1) provide the remanufactured products to a manufacturer, then the manufacturer sells both new products and the remanufactured products to customers, and (2) sell the remanufactured products directly to customers. Because of the relatively low acceptance of remanufactured products and environment consciousness of customers in developing countries like China, we model the two scenarios as decentralized remanufacturing supply chains, with the manufacturer being the Stackelberg leader and the government offering subsidy to the remanufacturer to incentivize remanufacturing activities. We find that the subsidy can incentivize remanufacturing activity regardless of the remanufacturer's channel choice. A "too high" or "too low" subsidy makes the remanufacturer compete with the manufacturer, and an intermediate subsidy results in cooperation between the two members of the remanufacturing supply chain. Meanwhile, if the customers' acceptance for remanufactured products is higher, the remanufacturer will be more likely to compete with the manufacturer. However, the remanufacturer's optimal channel choice may be inefficient in the sense of social welfare and environmental protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The article explains the definition of closed-loop supply chain and remanufacturing supply chain. This thesis describes the remanufacturing logistics process which based on closed-loop supply chain management. Through analysis of the current remanufacturing supply chain management problem, we proposes some measures of the implementation of remanufacturing supply chain management. It has an important significance on remanufacturing reverse logistics management based on closed-loop supply chain management processes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

With the shortage of global resources and the call for sustainable development, the remanufacturing supply chain and the corporate social responsibility of enterprises have attracted extensive attention from scholars. This paper studies a manufacturer-retailer corporate social responsibility (CSR) remanufacturing supply chain in which the manufacturer collects the used products grounded in the willingness to pay (WTP) differentiation. Different from previous literature, this paper first adds WTP differences to the CSR remanufacturing supply chain. Next, we analyze the manufacturer exhibiting CSR activity by Stackelberg game theory in both centralized and decentralized models with a consideration of prices, recycling, consumer surplus, and profits for the chain players in the two models with different CSR ratios. Through calculation and analyses of the models, we note that the chain members have the best status when the consumers' WTP for new and remanufactured products is within a threshold. Subsequently, we compare the optimal price decisions and the expected profits in the decentralized and centralized systems, and we find that the retail price, wholesale price, and recycling rate decrease with a rising CSR under WTP differentiation. The centralized retail price is lower than the decentralized one. Conversely, the profit is higher when the increment of demand is higher. On top of that, in common cases, the pure and total profits of manufacturing are ascending while the retailer's profit is descending. We also find that the consumer surplus is increasing in two cases. Finally, to motivate the players in the supply chain to engage in CSR activity, we consider the revenue sharing contract. From the perspective of WTP differences, this paper studies CSR remanufacturing, which has certain influences on the sustainable development of the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]