Design of a network of reusable logistic containers

Jean-Charles Lange () and Pierre Semal ()
Additional contact information
Jean-Charles Lange: Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain School of Management and CORE, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Pierre Semal: Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain School of Management and CORE, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

No 2010009, LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract: In this paper, we consider the management of the return flows of empty logistic containers that accumulate at the customer’s sites. These containers must be brought back to the factories in order to sustain future expeditions. We consider a network composed of several factories and several customers in which the return flows are independent of the delivery flows. The models and their solutions aim at finding to which factory the contain- ers have to be brought back and at which frequency. These frequencies directly define the volume of logistic containers to hold in the network. We consider fixed transportation costs depending on the locations of the customers and of the factories and linear holding costs for the inventory of logistic containers. The analysis also provides insight on the benefit of pooling the containers among different customers and/or factories.

Keywords: supply chain management; returnable items; reverse logistic; economic order quantity; network design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-02-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://sites.uclouvain.be/core/publications/coredp/coredp2010.html (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cor:louvco:2010009

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) Voie du Roman Pays 34, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alain GILLIS ().