Remanufacturing supply chain coordination under the stochastic remanufacturability rate and the random demand

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.