http://repub.eur.nl/res/aut/2439/ List of Publications en http://repub.eur.nl/static-eur/img/logo.png http://repub.eur.nl http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/2297/ 2004-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/909/ 2003-08-07T00:00:00Z Schering spends considerable effort to undertake product recovery activities in pharmaceutical production. The two main recovery activities are by-product recycling and solvent reuse. The main driver for engaging in these activities is economical. Recovery leads to annual savings of approximately DM 25 million, which is about 8.5 % of the total production cost. This figure does not include additional savings due to reduced disposal quantities and additional costs due to investments in recovery equipment, of which we do not have reliable estimates. Furthermore, being engaged in recovery activities has additional benefits for Schering that are related to the reduced waste stream: production is in accordance with environmental legislation, the company builds an environmentally friendly image, and there is less strain on the environment. The downside of the recovery activities is that they complicate production and inventory planning. Especially the added complexity of production planning, resulting from cycles in the production structure, is a disadvantage.A simple MRP approach, as commonly used in practice, is no longer applicable but has to be replaced by a more sophisticated planning procedure. Schering has developed an advanced decision support system which integrates a MIP procedure. Thus it turns out that reverse logistics also is a field which creates challenges for developing advanced planning systems in order to support practical decision making. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/1710/ 2001-11-28T00:00:00Z More and more supply chains emerge that include a return flow of materials. Many original equipment manufacturers are nowadays engaged in the remanufacturing business. In many process industries, production defectives and by-products are reworked. These closed-loop supply chains deserve special attention. Production planning and control in such hybrid systems is a real challenge, especially due to increased uncertainties. Even companies that are engaged in remanufacturing operations only, face more complicated planning situations than traditional manufacturing companies. We point out the main complicating characteristics in closed-loop systems with both remanufacturing and rework, and indicated the need for new or modified/extended production planning and control approaches. An overview of the existing scientific contributions is given. It appears that we only stand at the beginning of this line of research, and that many more contributions are needed and expected in the future. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/14930/ 2001-05-06T00:00:00Z When returns of goods and remanufacturing options have to be taken into consideration in inventory control situations, two additional sources of complexity appear in the traditional approaches of optimizing stochastic inventory control. Firstly, due to uncertainty of returns, an additional stochastic impact has to be regarded. Secondly, with remanufacturing a second mode of supply of serviceable goods is given, so that coordination with the regular mode of procurement becomes necessary. It can be shown that under these conditions we face extremely complicated optimal control rules if the leadtimes for remanufacturing and regular procurement differ. This holds for both the structure of the control policy and the inventory information necessary for optimal stock adjustment. In this context, the meaning of the inventory position, which is well-defined in traditional inventory control, is no longer evident. In practice, in these situations usually simple (suboptimal) decision rules are applied that only use a few control parameters and additionally do not take into consideration the complexity of defining the inventory position appropriately. For such a simple (4-parameter) control rule it is shown that by determining the inventory position in a proper way the performance of the policy can be improved considerably. This effect is equivalent to using the remanufacturing leadtime as a decision variable which has to be fixed in an optimal way.