Reverse logistic network design using system dynamics approach cement industry case study

Today, companies have obliged to review their way of doing business due to reasons such as raising awareness of consumers, realizing that natural resources are not endless, global warming, climate change, as well as legal and global regulations. The concept of supply chain, which is one of the most basic processes of a company, has ceased to be traditional forward-looking and thus reverse logistics has an important place in the chain. Final products semi-products, packaging materials or wastes generated in processes become a value both in their own sector and in other sectors. From this point of view, reverse logistics and network design of reverse logistics, obstacles and drivers in design are examined in the thesis. Wooden pallets are widely used in many industries as packaging and transportation material in the handling and storage process. Wooden pallets have a significant economic value even after they are used, and they can join to the reverse logistics network by appropriate return systems for recovery. Wooden pallets were chosen as the primary subject of the thesis and the recovery of wooden pallets was considered. System dynamics approach, which is an effective and popular tool in reverse logistics network design, has been used as a method for creating a reverse logistics network for wooden pallet recovery. In the thesis, a case study was conducted to create a reverse logistics network for the recovery of wooden pallets in the cement sector, and by different scenarios in the Stella software, it was observed that economic and environmental benefits could be obtained from wooden pallets with three-ways of recycling methods (reuse, remanufacturing and recycling). In the study, sectoral real data and assumptions were used, besides factors such as quality rate and motivation, it was examined how the changes in the cost and sales prices of all the elements in the chain affected the system. Since the number of studies using system dynamics method in reverse logistics network design is few in the literature, the theoretical contribution of this study is important. In addition, it is thought that the study also contributes to the managerial practices due to the positive feedback from the company on testing the model as a real implementation and the managerial inferences made about the sector and its actions. Keywords: Sustainable supply chain, reverse logistics, reverse logistics network design, system dynamics, wooden pallet, cement industry.