A business-mapping approach to multi-criteria group selection of collection centers and recovery facilities

For a prospective reverse supply chain to operate efficiently, the designing of that chain must involve selection of collection centers and recovery facilities that have sufficient success potentials. In this paper, we proposed a three-phase selection approach. In the first phase of the approach, we identified criteria for evaluation of the alternatives (collection centers and recovery facilities), for each group participating in the reverse supply chain. In the second phase, we gave weights to the criteria of each group using the eigen vector method, and then, employed the TOPSIS (technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution) to find the success potential of each alternative, as evaluated by that group. Then, in the third and final phase, we used Borda\´s choice rule to combine individual success potentials of each alternative into a maximized consensus ranking. We also employ a GIS-based application, MapLand, to "map" the results obtained in the second and the third phases of our approach.