Effective Closed loop supply chain Organization

Given the strong focus on business sustainability nowadays, more and more companies view their product return flows on a global scale. Life cycle management is becoming an integral part of global supply chains, which ultimately leads to more involvement with the installed base through service logistics and configuration management as well as proper take back and recycling systems for End-of-Life products. Globalization of recovery operations offers opportunities for lowering recovery costs, improving recovery yield, and targeting new markets. At the same time, globalized return flows provide a counter-balance against the current imbalances in trade flows between Asia, Europe and North-America, improving transportation efficiencies and reducing empty container kilometers.

The goals of this Transumo project are to:

• Define the field of global closed loop supply chains and position it in mainstream supply chain management and supply chain economics. What are determinants for globalization of closed loop supply chains? What is the impact of legislation?
• Analyze the impact of future global return flows.
• Contribute to the analysis and development of strategies for the repositioning of containers by defining a number of strategic market assessments.
• Develop strategies for businesses to improve their position in global recycling.

This project is particularly innovative in the sense that closed loop supply chains is a relatively new research focus, while recovery initiatives are usually on a national or even smaller scale. Transition to global initiatives offer many opportunities, but are often hindered by legislation and lack of knowledge regarding concepts and best practices. This project brings together participants from business, academia and government in order to augment this transition process. The current focus is on the B2B electronic and electrical equipment (EEE).

Soon the collecting of macro economic data regarding the container flows and setting up relevant scenarios for analysis will start. An international workshop on closed loop supply chains (8-10 October, Rotterdam) is being organized.

Participants
Contell / Device Global / IBM / Port of Rotterdam / RSM, Erasmus University / University of Tilburg / University of Twente

Projectmanager
Erasmus University: Dr. E. van der Laan

For more information, please contact Transumo at info@transumo.nl, +31 79 3470950