Literature Review of Reverse Logistics Problem

Abstract

In this paper a literature review of various problems concerned with the area of reverse logistics has been carried out. Reverse logistics forms an important domain in supply chain management. Because of growing global competition, increased concern towards green environment and strict legislations, business organizations of many countries are compelled to use reverse logistics as a part of their logistics support in bringing back the products which have been supplied to customers after sometime. Reverse logistics in brief is all about recycle, reduce and reuse of products. In the literature review, the problems are classified into facility location problem, logistics network problem, vehicle routing problem and other problems. Under each problem type, discussions are carried out based on type of models/algorithms used to solve that problem. At the end, directions for future research are presented.