Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 2010 (2010), Article ID 649028, 16 pages
doi:10.1155/2010/649028
Research Article

Designing a Reverse Logistics Network for End-of-Life Vehicles Recovery

Department of Industrial Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, 424 Hafez Avenue, 1591634311 Tehran, Iran

Received 28 March 2009; Revised 30 September 2009; Accepted 12 January 2010

Academic Editor: Nickolas S. Sapidis

Copyright © 2010 Masoud Zarei et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The environmental factors are receiving increasing attention in different life cycle stages of products. When a product reaches its End-Of-Life (EOL) stage, the management of its recovery process is affected by the environmental and also economical factors. Selecting efficient methods for the collection and recovery of EOL products has become an important issue. The European Union Directive 2000/53/EC extends the responsibility of the vehicle manufacturers to the postconsumer stage of the vehicle. In order to fulfill the requirements of this Directive and also efficient management of the whole recovery process, the conceptual framework of a reverse logistics network is presented. The distribution of new vehicles in an area and also collecting the End-of-Life Vehicles (ELVs) and their recovery are considered jointly. It is assumed that the new vehicles distributors are also responsible for collecting the ELVs. Then a mathematical model is developed which minimizes the costs of setting up the network and also the relevant transportation costs. Because of the complexity of the model, a solution methodology based on the genetic algorithm is designed which enables achieving good quality solutions in a reasonable algorithm run time.