Evaluating the Performance of Recoverable End-of-life Products in the Reverse Supply Chain

Abstract

Evaluating the performance of recoverable end-of-life products with respect to a set of specific criteria is challenging. This is due to multi-dimensional nature of the decision making process, multiple evaluation criteria, and subjective and imprecise assessments. To effectively deal with this issue, this paper presents a multicriteria decision making method for evaluating the performance of recoverable end-of-life products in the reverse supply chain. The multi-dimensional nature of the performance evaluation process is handled in the context of multicriteria analysis. Linguistic terms approximated by triangular fuzzy numbers are used to tackle the subjectiveness and imprecision of the performance evaluation process. A new algorithm is developed for producing an overall performance index for every recoverable end-of-life product alternative across all performance evaluation criteria. A recoverable end-of-life products’ performance evaluation problem is presented for demonstrating the applicability of the method.