Managing Closed-loop Supply Chains

The increasing number of returns of products and the items used for their distribution has become an important topic for many companies all over the world due to increasing competition and environmental legislation. Closed-Loop Supply Chains (CLSC) may offer companies a unique opportunity to improve their profits on the one hand and to serve societal responsibility on the other hand. The management of CLSC differs in a number of ways from managing supply chains in general. The book gives insight in these differences and how these differences may be dealt with in practice, by offering  a concrete framework, introducing the different aspects related to  CLSC (technical, organisational, planning and control, information, environmental and business economic) and their mutual relations, in a systematic logical way as well as cases clustered according to the inputs for a CLSC, like commercial returns, end-of-life returns, where for each case attention is paid to all the above mentioned aspects. The framework and especially the cases from successful companies offer the reader an invaluable help to build up and improve CLSC.