Inventory policies for the economic lot-sizing problem with remanufacturing and final disposal options

We address the economic lot-sizing problem with remanufacturing and final disposal options, known as the ELSR. For this lot-sizing problem, the demand can be also satisfied by remanufacturing used items returned to origin. In this paper, we suggest and evaluate a set of inventory policies designed specially for the ELSR. They are based on a decomposition analysis of the problem into their activities and in the key role that remanufacturing plays in the resolution of the ELSR. We introduce the concepts of useful returns and useful remanufacturing. These concepts allow us to obtain a remanufacturing plan that tries to maximize the use of returns as well as minimize all of the involved costs, thereby simultaneously fulfilling both ecological and economic goals. In addition to these policies, we propose a basic Tabu Search procedure with the aim of finding a near optimal solution of the ELSR. All the solving methods proposed are time-effective. Based on the results obtained from numerical experimentation, we conclude that at least one of them is also cost-effective for a given instance of the problem.