Management of material flows in closed-loop supply chains. Decision support system for electronic scrap recycling companies

Due to the latest developments in European environmental legislation, producers will be responsible for collecting, sorting and recycling of discarded products at the end of their service life. They will be charged by the total recycling costs which leads to higher lifecycle costs of their products. Therefore, a close cooperation with recycling companies and their integration in producers supply chains, e.g. as suppliers of spare parts and secondary raw materials, will be necessary and leads to so called "closed-loop supply chains". A cost-efficient management of material flows between suppliers, producers, customers and recycling companies requires an integrated information management as well as advanced planning systems. The paper focuses on the design and implementation of a decision support system for electronic scrap recycling companies in closed-loop supply chains. It has been implemented in a major German electronic scrap recycling company and validated by real data.