Modeling and Analysis of a Reverse Supply Chain Network for Lead-Acid Battery Manufacturing

This paper describes the design of a closed-loop supply chain network for a lead-acid battery manufacturing operation. The planning model encompasses the entire closed-loop business process including purchasing, production, and end-of-life dead product collection and recycling. The model is a multi-objective, multi-echelon mixed integer linear program, which minimizes the total cost of the operations and the total pollution emissions related to transportation, subject to structural and functional constraints. Numerical examples have been provided to present the results regarding raw material procurement, production, recycling and inventory levels, and the transportation activities between the various echelons.