Designing Closed-Loop Supply Chains for Clean Manufacturing: Investigating Reverse Flow Practices and Collection Mechanisms

Due to an enormous growth in resource usage and environmental pollution, returning the end-of-use product to the use cycle has received wide attention. A closed-loop supply chain can reduce virgin resource usage and environmental impact and achieve economic benefit by returning waste and end-of-use products to the use cycle. This study examines significant practices such as recycling and reducing, considering material type and material recyclability. Especially, the impact of raw material types and their recyclability on recycling amount, resource usage, and environmental pollution are investigated. Effectively, a MILP multi-objective model is formulated with total cost as an economic benefit and material management as an environmental benefit. Finally, the correctness of the proposed model is verified by a case study of the beverage industry in Mexico City using the augment epsilon constraints method. We analyze the proposed model in three aspects, including material types, recycling rate, collection mechanism, and return rate. The findings demonstrate that the manufacturing supply chain could tend to enhance the recycling amount when the recycling cost decreases and the recycling rate increases. Additionally, improving the collection mechanism could increase reverse value to achieve economic and environmental benefits. The research also extends the understanding of closed-loop supply chains by defining the important reverse flow practices and collection mechanisms for manufacturing enterprises.