A multi-period reverse logistics optimisation model for end-of-life vehicles recovery based on EU Directive

The end-of-life (EoL) phase is a stage in every product lifecycle, where its management is affected by economical and environmental parameters. The main problem facing manufacturers is how to collect the EoL products and what to do with them in order to obtain the maximum economic benefits from their recovery and at the same time fulfilling the relevant legislations. By introduction of the European Union Directive on end-of-life vehicles (ELVs), the manufacturers are responsible for free take back and recovery of their vehicles. Implementing this Directive will impose new additional costs on manufacturers. In order to achieve an efficient management of the recovery process and minimising the costs, manufacturers should join with treatment facilities and hence creating a network. In this paper, these new cost drivers are established and then based on the number, location and the capacity of the collection centres, dismantlers and also the amount of materials flow between different facilities, a multi-period reverse logistics optimisation model is developed. A solution methodology has been developed based on a multiple start search algorithm where a heuristic method is performed in each iteration. Two procedures for improving the quality of the generated solutions are proposed. The first procedure is based on a sub-problem optimisation technique and the second one is a search algorithm.