Dynamic inventory management in reverse logistics. (Q2493511)

This book, based on a university thesis, looks into the area of reverse logistics. It is split into six chapters, with the first one presenting an introduction to the area of inventory management and the methodology used in the thesis as well as an overview of the other chapters. The second chapter studies the basic dynamic model of product recovery, under the assumption of a linear cost regime. Mathematical proofs of the presented theorems are given throughout, as well as extensive graphs presenting the optimal inventory levels examined in the chapter. The third chapter investigates the impact of capacity constraints on product recovery. This is done by adjusting the basic model, described in the previous chapter, to accommodate these constraints. This chapter is then followed by a chapter on knowledge acquisition, which expands the model to deal with empirical phenomena that have been observed in practical product recovery. Several results, including optimality conditions and numerical experimentation are detailed in this chapter. The fifth chapter studies the effects of technology selection on reverse logistics. It is the last research chapter of the thesis and contains an extensive numerical investigation of several projects, including theoretical proofs, statistical analysis and statistical tests. The thesis concludes with chapter six, which contains a short concluding remark on the significance of this research.