تاثیر گسترش محصول بر زنجیره تامین معکوس

Product variety is one of the most important advantages in highly competitive markets. However, excessive product proliferation's reducing the profit margin has caused increased focus on developing a management method for maximal profit. In a closed-loop supply chain, product proliferation affects the reverse supply chain as well as the forward supply chain. Although increasing the number of product types can better satisfy diverse customer needs, complexity in the product recycling, remanufacturing, and resale processes may erode a firm's overall profits. In this study, we develop a mathematical model for analyzing a capacitated reverse supply chain consisting of a single manufacturer and multiple retailers. We reveal closed-form solutions for the optimal batch size and maximal profit, and discuss managerial insights into how the number of products and other factors can affect both batch size and profit. Finally, we investigate the relationship between product proliferation and the choice of logistics strategy.

Rapidly evolving technologies, global competition, and changes in customer needs have contributed to an increase in product variety. According to Lee [1], product proliferation has been one of the most important market trends, and is very common in many industries [2], [3], [4] and [5]. For example, in 1992, over 2000 different PC models were available on the market, and between 1990 and 2004, the number of stock-keeping units in supermarkets increased from 16,500 to 25,153 [6]. Product variety can be defined in two ways: the breadth of products that a firm offers at any given time, and the rate at which a firm replaces existing products with new ones. Each of these parameters has steadily increased in many industries [7], [8] and [9]. Firms regard product variety as an important tool of competition as it can better serve heterogeneous market segments and better satisfy diverse consumer preferences, enabling companies to increase or maintain their market share and enjoy higher profits. However, high product variety could also imply increased manufacturing complexity and cost [10] and [11]. In the past, firms relied solely on experience or intuition to determine the number of products to offer, and consequently tended to underestimate the operational inefficiencies and costs inherent in product variety. Kim and Chhajed [12] indicated that product proliferation may reduce manufacturing/logistics performance. Ramdas and Sawhney [13] claimed that simply increasing product variety does not guarantee an increase in long-term profits, and can, in fact, worsen competitiveness. Therefore, many firms have considered reducing the number of products they offer as a means of improving their supply chain performance. Raleigh [14] noted that Unilever uses its product logic framework to simplify its global home and personal care product portfolio. Yunes et al. [15] studied how the number of configurations for John Deere can be reduced to maximize profit. In both industry and academia, there is an ongoing debate about the cost–benefit tradeoff of product variety [9], [16], [17], [18], [19] and [20]. This uncertainty indicates the importance of carefully managing the number of products a company releases to maximize its profits. Recent years have also seen increased research on the reverse supply chain due to the rising awareness of environmental protection issues. The reverse supply chain is defined as the series of activities required to retrieve a product from a customer in order to dispose of it or recover its remaining value [21]. The reverse supply chain process can be organized as five sequential key steps: collection of returned product or product acquisition, reverse logistics, inspection and disposition, remanufacturing or reconditioning, and selling and distribution [22]. Product return can be divided into two major types in a reverse supply chain: the return of a commercial product, and end of use (EOU) or end of life (EOL) product returns. In this paper, we focus on commercial product returns that Guide et al. [23] defined as products returned for any reason within 90 day of sale. The overall value of commercial product returns exceeds $100 billion annually in the United States [24], and therefore, management of the flow of product returns to maximize profit is a significant concern for many manufacturers. Product proliferation affects not only the forward supply chain but also the reverse chain. Although increasing the number of products will satisfy diverse customer demands, the increased complexity of product recycling, remanufacturing, and resale may reduce a firm's profitability. Therefore, we developed a mathematical model to analyze the effects of product proliferation on a capacitated reverse supply chain consisting of a single remanufacturer and multiple retailers. We find the closed form solution for the optimal batch size and profit, and discuss managerial insights derived from the closed form solutions. We also explore the relationship between the number of products that a system offers and the logistic strategies in the reverse supply chain. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we review the relevant literature. In Section 3, we describe our research problem and assumptions in detail. In Section 4, we develop a mathematical model and derive the closed-form solutions. In Section 5, we present our managerial insights based on sensitivity analyses. The relationship between product variety and choice of logistics strategy is discussed in Section 6. Finally, in Section 7, we summarize our findings and discuss promising areas for future research.

Firms regard product variety as an important tool for gaining a competitive advantage and enjoying greater profits, as such variety can expand their market share by satisfying diverse customer needs. However, because high product variety can increase their manufacturing complexity and costs, the number of products offered by a company must be managed carefully for maximal profit. Because commercial product returns have significant value, manufacturers must focus on reverse supply chain management to extract most of this value. Therefore, in this paper, we explore the effects of product variety on the reverse supply chain. A mathematical model based on queuing theory is developed, and closed-form solutions of optimal profit and batch size are ascertained. Our research findings offer several managerial implications. First, past literature has demonstrated that product variety reduces profits, primarily because of change-over delay or cost. We demonstrate that, in the reverse supply chain, even without product change-over delay or cost, product proliferation still erodes firm's profit due to the increase in shipping cost. If there is product change-over delay or cost, the firm should be even more cautious about product proliferation. That is, managers must carefully evaluate the cost of product variety. Second, managers tend to reduce their optimal batch size when the number of products, number of retailers, holding costs, price, and/or discount rates are larger. A variance of unit processing time does not significantly affect batch size. Batch size will first increase at a decreasing rate up to a threshold aggregated return level, and then decrease at an increasing rate with respect to the aggregated return rate. Third, we demonstrated that the number of products offered is an important determinant for a firm's logistics strategy. Managers dealing with products with higher prices and larger discount rates tend to switch to an outsourcing strategy when the number of products offered is smaller.