Artificial Intelligence in Reverse Supply Chain Management: The State of the Art

Product take-back legislation forces manufacturers to bear the costs of collection and disposal of products that have reached the end of their useful lives. In order to reduce these costs, manufacturers can consider reuse, remanufacturing and/or recycling of components as an alternative to disposal. The implementation of such alternatives usually requires an appropriate reverse supply chain management. With the concepts of reverse supply chain are gaining popularity in practice, the use of artificial intelligence approaches in these areas is also becoming popular. As a result, the purpose of this paper is to give an overview of the recent publications concerning the application of artificial intelligence techniques to reverse supply chain with emphasis on certain types of product returns. Proceedings of the Twenty-First Annual Symposium of the Pattern Recognition Association of South Africa 22-23 November 2010 Stellenbosch, South Africa, pp. 305-310