Setting up reverse logistics - Process study

Managing returns has recently become a major concern for manufacturers.

The new European directives are the main cause. In the very near future, all manufacturers will be responsible for the products they produce until they are recycled and/or destroyed. This means that products must be able to be recovered and put into a return channel that will take them to one or more reprocessing facilities. This recovery operation implies that the various logistics service providers are also heavily involved in this new process, and that they play an active role in developing the logistics network required for reverse logistics.

All the processes involved in dismantling a product for re-use mean that it must be designed for easy disassembly. Reverse logistics therefore begins at the product design stage and ends when the product has been fully recycled or destroyed.

In the first part [AG 5 250], we'll look at how far some companies have gone with reverse logistics, and how they've approached the subject. This article will highlight the difficulties a company may encounter, but also the financial and competitive advantages that such a logistics approach can bring.

In the second part , we'll put ourselves in the shoes of a hardware manufacturer wishing to implement reverse logistics to better manage its returns. We'll see that this wish was born out of customer demand, as well as competitive and environmental pressure.

This study aims to show how an international industrial company can create a reverse logistics network to provide an additional service to end customers, while complying with the new European directives.