Research on the returned logistics network optimal design of packaging materials in storage & transportation process based on TOC

Wastes of packaging materials are pollution sources but are useful resources in some sense. The world attaches its importance to recovery and reuse of them. Packaging materials of in all kinds of storage & transportation process are most commonly used and have a high recovery value. To achieve effective logistics management in the packaging materials returned system, ideas of Theory of Constraints are applied in this paper. Goods flows decision model for global optimization in the network is proposed whose objective function is throughput. Accordingly, the allocation of the corresponding goods flows in the network can be decided. On this basis, optimal lot size model for local optimization is set up. Finally, an example is presented to demonstrate the validity of the integrated model, and shows that the model is superior to the traditional approach.