A note on a model to evaluate acquisition price and quantity of used products for remanufacturing

Pokharel and Liang [2012. A model to evaluate acquisition price and quantity of used products for remanufacturing. Int. J. Prod. Econ. 138, 170-176] considered a consolidation center that buys used products of different quality levels and sells them together with spare parts to a remanufacturer. The consolidation center׳s decision problem is to determine the acquisition price to offer for used products and the quantities of spare parts to buy. In this paper, comments on their work are given. It is shown that following Pokharel and Liang׳s original assumptions, the problem has a trivial solution. We then consider an alternative assumption where supply is uniform and depends on the acquisition price. For this setting, an efficient solution algorithm and numerical examples are provided. In a second model, additional assumptions are relaxed, allowing the consolidation center more flexibility. As expected, this further decreases cost.