Bir stokastik üretim/yeniden üretim sisteminde ürün ikame stratejisinin değerlendirilmesi

With the increasing environmental consciousness in the last decades, people are now more aware that Earth?s resources are finite. These scarce resources cause a risk for the manufacturers since their costs fluctuate unexpectedly. As a result big manufacturing firms always look for ways to decrease their dependence on resources and reduce the risks. Moreover governments put into action some regulations in order to limit the utilization of natural resources and to reduce the gas emissions. Both the increasing costs of using virgin materials and the limiting regulations on their usage make the manufacturers investigate the product recovery options. In this study we consider remanufacturing as the recovery option and analyze an infinite horizon periodic-review inventory control problem for a hybrid manufacturing/remanufacturing system with product substitution where demand and returns are stochastic. In this system, a remanufactured item is considered to have an inferior value from the customer?s viewpoint and thus has a lower selling price than a new item. The manufacturer considers the use of a one-way product substitution strategy, according to which the demand for remanufactured items is satisfied by new items at the reduced price, if the remanufactured item inventory runs out of stock and the new item inventory is positive. The problem is formulated as a discrete-time Markov Decision Process in order to determine the value of product substitution. The profitability of using the product substitution strategy is investigated through a numerical study based on real data from an automobile parts manufacturer.