Conceptual Issues Regarding Reverse Logistics

As the power of consumers is growing, the product return for customer service and customer retention has become a common practice in the competitive market, which propels the recent practice of reverse logistics in companies. Many firms attracted by the value available in the flow, have proactively participated in handling returned products at the end of their usefulness or from other parts of the product life cycle. Reverse logistics is the flow and management of products, packaging, components and information from the point of consumption to the point of origin. It is a collection of practices similar to those of supply chain management, but in the opposite direction, from downstream to upstream. It involves activities such as reuse, repair, remanufacture, refurbish, reclaim and recycle. For the conventional forward logistics systems, the flow starts upstream as raw materials, later as manufactured parts and components to be assembled and continues downstream to reach customers as final products to be disposed once they reach their economic or useful lives. In reverse logistics, the disposed products are pushed upstream to be repaired, remanufactured, refurbished, and disassembled into components to be reused or as raw material to be recycled for later use.