Modeling the Merging Capacity for Two Streams of Product Returns in Remanufacturing Systems

Abstract

We consider a remanufacturing system with two streams of returned products and different variability levels (high and low). The arrival of returns with high variability is modeled with a hyperexponential renewal process and that of returns with low variability is modeled with a Poisson process. The remanufacturing facility can process the returned products in two ways. For the first way, each type of returns is remanufactured by a dedicated capacity. For the second way, returns from two different markets are remanufactured by a merged capacity. The remanufacturing process is based on M/M/1, H/M/1, and H2M/M/1 queueing models. The proposed modeling determines the admission decision threshold value of the returned products based on the quality and the processing time in order to maximize the total expected profit of the remanufacturing system.