Design for a Closed-Loop Supply Chain System With Sensor-Embedded Refrigerators

Abstract

This chapter presents a methodology to evaluate the benefit of using sensors in closed-loop supply chains. Sensors can be embedded into products to collect helpful information during their use and end-of-life (EOL) phases. This information can subsequently be employed to estimate the remaining lives of components and products and to ensure that proper maintenance is provided to avoid premature failures. The information is also useful in determining the quality of the components and products when planning EOL operations such as disassembly, inspection, and remanufacturing. To statistically illustrate these benefits, discrete event simulation is employed to a case study consisting of regular and sensor-embedded refrigerator systems. A design of experiments study is then employed where experiments are run to compare the two systems. The results reveal that the sensor-embedded systems perform much better than the regular systems in terms of disassembly costs, inspection costs, and EOL profits generated by selling the remanufactured products and components.