Optimal strategies for manufacturing/remanufacturing system with the consideration of recycled products

• A manufacturing/remanufacturing system with recycled products is modeled.
• Functions of recycling rate, buyback cost and remanufacturing cost are constructed.
• Solution processes with PSO and GA are constructed.
• Optimal strategy of recycling, manufacturing and remanufacturing is investigated.
• Sensitive analysis and the validity of the model have been proved.

This paper analyzes the model of the recycled products which are considered with the minimum quality level in manufacturing/remanufacturing system. In this model, a constant demand is satisfied by manufacturing raw materials and remanufacturing recycled products which are up to the quality level. It is assumed that functions of recycling rate, buyback cost and remanufacturing cost are depend on the minimum quality level. The quality level of recycled products is set to be exponential distribution and then the model is established. The results show that when the buyback cost is low (the quality of the recycled products is low), the average total cost is low, though the remanufacturing cost is high. Namely, the companies are willing to recycle the used products with low quality level. Meanwhile, the optimal strategy of recycling, manufacturing and remanufacturing is investigated here. Through construction of a solution process on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Genetic Algorithm (GA) and numerical examples with sensitive analysis, the validity of the model has been proved.