PRODUCTION PLANNING AND INVENTORY CONTROL WITH REMANUFACTURING AND DISPOSAL

In this paper we consider a stochastic inventory system with productio n, remanufacturing, and disposal operations. Customer demands must eit her be fulfilled from the production of new products or by the remanuf acturing of used products. Used products are either remanufactured or disposed of. To coordinate production, remanufacturing and disposal op erations efficiently, we extend the PUSH and PULL strategies that Van der Laan et al. developed to control a system in which all returned pr oducts are remanufactured and no planned disposals occur. The other co ntributions of this paper are to indicate when and why planned disposa ls are economically beneficial, and to compare the PUSH-disposal strat egy to the PULL disposal strategy. In addition, we investigate the rob ustness of the control parameters of the PUSH-and PULL-disposal strate gy over the different stages of a product life-cycle. (C) 1997 Elsevie r Science B.V.