Reverse Supply Chain: Literature Review and Models

Mohamed Abdulkader; S. K. Bhatt; Tarek El-Mekkawy

Reverse Supply Chain: Literature Review and Models

Mohamed Abdulkader ¹, S. K. Bhatt ², Tarek El-Mekkawy ³

Affiliations
1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
2 Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, Canada
3 Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Qatar University, Qatar

A supply chain (SC) consists of all parties involved, directly or indirectly, in fulfilling a customer requestas defined in Chopra&Meindl (2007). This includes supplier, manufacturer, distributors, retailer, and customer. In addition, all the functions and departments within each organisation are included in the SC. Supply Chain Management (SCM) is the coordination between all these parties and functions for the advantage of the whole supply chain. This coordination requires flow of products (in the direction of customers), funds (in the direction of suppliers) and information between different parties.