Abstract
Enforced environmental regulations call for extending the domain of manufacturers' responsibility to the entire product life cycle. To comply with the environmental regulations, manufacturers have constructed reverse logistics networks to re-collect their leftover waste for recycling consumed resources. However, the operational activities associated with storage, loading and transportation processes within the networks inevitably impose environmental burdens. Particularly, the transportation process largely influences environmental performance due to perpetual uses of transportation vehicles. Therefore, there is a need to develop an environmentally-conscious transportation model that can efficiently manage the uses of transportation vehicles. Additionally, it is vital to analyze its significances of environmental performance to compare quantitatively it with existing models. This paper proposes a transportation model for improving environmental performance in a reverse logistics network. This paper also presents a case study to perform its comparative analysis using Life Cycle Assessment that evaluates potential environmental impacts of a product system.
