Robust design of a closed-loop supply chain considering multiple recovery options and carbon policies under uncertainty

Abstract

Increasing global warming, climate change and stringent governmental legislations are driving industry practitioners and decision makers to implement various strategies to reduce carbon emissions. One of the effective approaches to mitigate carbon emissions is the implementation of closed-loop supply chain (CLSC). The key motivation for considering multiple recovery options in the CLSC is to capture the remaining economic value and to reduce carbon emissions in the collection and recovery operations. Customer's willingness to return used product depends on the acquisition price and nearness to the collection center. This research proposes a deterministic mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model for a multi-period and multi-product CLSC network under carbon pricing and carbon trading policies consideration. The model includes different acquisition price for returned products and multiple recovery options. Further, the study takes into consideration uncertainty in procurement cost, demand, and quantity of returned products. A robust optimization approach is adopted to address uncertainty in network parameters. Numerical results show that the proposed model captures trade-offs between total cost and carbon emission. Overall, the study reveals that the carbon trading policy incurs relatively lower total cost compared to the carbon pricing policy. Repair and recycling activities in the reverse supply chain contribute significantly to the total cost and carbon emission. This study provide evidence that it is possible to achieve an optimal CLSC network with reduced carbon emission at a moderate total supply chain cost. The proposed model could be used to guide firms to choose an appropriate budget of uncertainty toward achieving a robust supply chain network.