The challenge of selecting and evaluating third-party reverse logistics providers in a multicriteria perspective: a Brazilian case

Following recent legislations and public policies on solid waste and product take-back, companies in Brazil are now impelled to incorporate reverse logistics practices in their business processes. The Brazilian National Policy of Solid Waste - NPSW, approved in 2010, obligates companies to implement reverse logistics. Considering this, many companies in Brazil have studied the possibility to outsource these activities by engaging third-party reverse logistics providers - 3PRLP. Considering these demands, it is important to define which systematic approaches can be used to select the most suitable 3PRLP. The objective of this article is to identify the main criteria, the systematic methods that can be used in order to select the most appropriate 3PRLP and also propose a framework based in multicriteria decision aid approach to select 3PRLP. Thus, a Systematic Literature Review was carried out and a conceptual framework for decision making in this context using Multicriteria Decision Aid - MCDA modeling was proposed. Therefore, this paper presents two contributions: i) a SLR covering the past decade based on the MCDA experiences in 3PRLP selection, highlighting the main criteria and systematic approaches used; ii) based on this SLR, a proposal for a conceptual methodological framework to help decision makers and researchers in performing a MCDA in the area of 3PRLP selection.