Circular Supply Chain Network Design for E-Commerce

Abstract

There is a growing attention in circular economy through researchers, enterprises and goverments. The idea of circular economy is not to give any harm to enviroment while using material till end of its life and keeping it as much as possible in the cycle. From this point of view, to keep the material in cycle might be possible with a well-designed logistics infrastructure. In this study, the small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) that make sales through e-commerce and the way of handling e-commerce returns are brought forward. The case study created for footware industry in Istanbul and a network design is proposed. Afterwards, a linear programming is used to calculated to minimize cost. This study gives a clear and simple solution for SMEs to minimize the cost for handling return products while keeping the returns in the cycle.