Designing of the reverse logistics network for returnable packaging

Reverse logistics has recently received considerable importance and attention across all industrial sectors due to a combination of economic, environmental and social factors. Reverse logistics management is a fundamental aspect of supply chain management that can not only reduce costs but also generate value for the company. It consists of all the operations intended to manage the return from the customers to the suppliers generally for operations of recycling, repair, disposal or reuse and this must be at the least cost. In this article, we focus on the reverse logistics of returning empty packaging for reuse from customers to their suppliers, we offer decision support models to optimize the performance of reusable packaging flows in terms of costs and packaging availability at suppliers. We propose a framework for structuring decisions regarding the management of reusable packaging flows, with the objective of optimizing transport and shortage costs. This paper presents a mixed integer linear programming to minimize the costs of transport and fixed opening in a reverse logistics network, in the empty packaging return chains, without falling apart.