Computational Intelligence in Used Products Retrieval and Reproduction

2.1. Retrieval

In remanufacturing environment, one of the major issues is the retrieval of the target items (i.e., used products in this research) (Guide & Jayaraman, 2000). It is indeed the first activity, and triggers the other activities involved in a remanufacturing process. As argued in Langella (2007), without used products being successfully collected, a remanufacturer would have nothing to remanufacturing. In general, retrieval refers to all operations rendering used products available and physically moving them to some point where further treatment is taken care of (Fleischmann et al., 2000). Used products collection, transportation, consolidation, transshipment, and storage are several common examples found at retrieval stage (Blanc, 2006). Therefore managing these operations potentially accounts for a significant part of the total costs and as a key factor in the overall performance of any remanufacturing process and its associated reverse supply chain (Fleischmann, 2001). And thus planning ahead in order to make remanufacturing profitable and in the meantime compliant with applicable laws and regulations is always suggested (Güngör & Gupta, 1999).