Logistics Operations and Management for Recycling and Reuse

The circular economy concept encourages the redesign of industrial activities and social practices in order to decouple the economic growth from negative environmental impact. The focus is placed on establishing more resource-efficient business models that allows reducing, reusing and recycling and therefore they support transition towards a “zero waste” economy. The environmental impact of logistics operations is formidable due to the GHG emissions, noise, and congestion and material waste. The logistics providers act, as the link between different companies in the supply chain therefore they have transformational potential towards circular economy at meso-scale. Most of the studies on circular business models focus on manufacturing and product design. The studies on logistics sector are very limited and this chapter addresses that research gap. The aim of this paper is to link the described in the literature circular economy business models with innovative sustainable practices in the logistics industry. The main contribution is the classification of the innovative technological, organizational and social sustainable practices in logistics sector. The bottom-up approach is taken, as it describes how sustainable practices at micro-level have transitional potential towards circular economy.

This chapter aims to identify and analyze the published definitions of circular economy (CE). Twenty-eight definitions were gathered through intensive critical literature review, using both Scopus and Web of Science. The definitions developed from peer-reviewed literature analysis covered a period from 1999 through 2019, although most definitions were published from 2011 onwards. CE received significant attention in the early 90s and now is considered a mainstream strategy for product design and social, economic and environmental sustainability. Given that research is still relatively new in the sustainable circular economy. CE offers a reverse resource regenerative idea to eliminate the linearity of production and consumption system to support sustainability objectives. The CE definition analysis revealed that so far, resilience and stakeholder perspective is not explicitly included in the definition, although stakeholder is considered to be part of a natural and ecology system. CE has an impact on different aspects of the business throughout the entire supply chain. The concept of a CE is a value-orientated resource transformational process. CE considers both upstream and downstream production and consumption patterns to promotes the resilience orientation of resources. Currently, CE practices are carried out—meso, micro and macro. This chapter highlights that suggest that it is imperative to consider exosystem and chronosystem to better move away from linear to circular economy.

Recycling waste materials has become increasingly important recently both for economic and environmental reasons. In order to efficiently operate the backward flow of the materials, a basic challenge is to design the proper reverse logistics network containing the collection points, test centers and manufacturing plants. This paper studies the supply network of waste wood, which has to be collected in dedicated accumulation centers, and transported to processing facilities. We focus on the facility location of processing centers and propose mathematical models that take economies of scale and robustness into account, including a novel approach based on bilevel optimization. We also give a local and tabu search method for the solution of the problem. Test results are presented for both the robust and non-robust case using instances based on a real-life dataset.

The growing amount of municipal solid wastes (MSW) per inhabitant is increasing in most of the European countries. The organization of efficient logistics for MSWs’ collection and recovery is crucial in order to improve the quality of environment and the human wellbeing. In European Union the municipalities are responsible to adopt measures to recycling and recovering of waste streams. The aim of this chapter is to identify the drivers and barriers inter-municipal solid waste. The data from over 230 Polish municipalities is analyzed. Our research contributes to the sustainability literature by providing the empirical evidence in this area.

Municipal solid waste (MSW) management is among the essential tasks of municipalities that requires large amounts of fixed/variable and investment costs. In this system, the processes of collection and transportation include the major part of these costs. On the other hand, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission as environmental aspect and citizenship satisfaction as social aspect are also of particular importance, which are vital requirements for MSW management that need to be taken into account. In this study, a novel mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model is developed to formulate the sustainable periodic capacitated arc routing problem (PCARP) for MSW management. The objectives are to concurrently minimize the total cost and total environmental emission, and maximize citizenship satisfaction. To solve the problem efficiently, a hybrid multi-objective optimization algorithm, namely, MOSA-MOIWOA is designed based on multi-objective simulated annealing algorithm (MOSA) and multi-objective invasive weed optimization algorithm (MOIWOA). To increase the algorithm performance, the Taguchi design method is employed to set the parameters optimally. The validation of the proposed methodology is evaluated using several problem instances in the literature. Finally, the obtained results demonstrate the high efficiency of the proposed model and algorithm to solve the problem.

In this research, designing a sustainable, multi-level, multi-products, and multi-period closed-loop supply chain network for perishable products is addressed. For this purpose, an integrated mathematical model is proposed. The main objectives are to minimize the production, distribution, and customer satisfaction related costs, minimize total CO₂ emissions, and maximize social responsibility. The contributions of this research include considering lead time for production and delivering perishable products in the supply chain network design problem, and proposing a novel hybrid algorithm based on whale optimization algorithm (WOA) and genetic algorithm (GA). To solve the problem and optimize the mathematical model, the proposed hybrid algorithm is implemented on several test problems in different sizes. The obtained results are compared with augmented epsilon constraint in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm provides Pareto solutions with acceptable quality and diversity.

Auxiliary processes are relevant element of the production process, due to the fact that they affect the technical and economic efficiency. In the modern production process there are many material flows between which or during which technological operations that process the input material into a finished product are carried out. Incorrect design or inadequate organization of supporting processes can cause serious disruptions or even financial losses, what may be analyzed from the perspective of sustainability. The chapter is focused on the process of internal transport, what is justified by influence of that process on the company’s economic effects, the quality of employees’ work and the quality of the natural environment. Authors analyze the internal transport process in a company representing recycling industry which is End-of-Life Vehicles disassembling enterprise. This sector is affecting People and Planet during generating Profits (3P concept). In disassembling company internal transport process includes transport of: ELV’s, vehicles parts, waste, but also it covers handling of materials including laying, fixing and measuring. Material flow is complex because of diversity in terms of materials’ size, shape, mass and quantity. In the result the internal transport process requires precise organization, which should be adopted to the company to ensure safe shipment of cargo with minimal costs. The basic purpose of the chapter is to prepare a proposal of method for internal transport assessment in terms of sustainability. Authors use the following research methods: literature review, case study, brainstorming. Chapter consists of three parts. The first part shows the role of the internal transport process as well as the differences between the transport process in a typical enterprise and disassembling company. In the second part, material flows occurring in disassembling facility are described. In the last part problems were identified and the directions of further research were indicated.

Cognitive grinding or active recycled and reuse machinery monitoring—continuous supervising, diagnosing, managing, controlling, compensating, documenting; a process of acquiring and transferring streams of information (usually source information) about the analyzed, developed object, process and relations between the same and the environment that can be used to realize the postulated state: knowledge creation (theory and innovation), environment melioration (harmfulness) and technical system optimization (design)—depending on technology needs and engineer imaginations. The objective of this paper is to provide a mathematical description, optimization of the states and changes in the grinding of recycled materials and machine space, their surface and volume during movement (idle and working movement) of the components and design assemblies in the multi-hole grinding process.

Blast furnace revamping in the steel industry is one of the most important works to complete the complicated equipment within a short period of time-based on the interfaces of various types of work. P company has planned to build a Smart Tracking System based on the wireless tag system to comply with the construction period and reduce costs, ahead of the revamping of blast furnace scheduled for construction in February next year. It combines detailed design data with wireless detection technology to grasp the stage status of design, storage, and installation. Then, it graphically displays the location information of each member to the plan and the actual status in connection with Building Information Modeling (BIM) 4D Simulation. QR Code is used as a wireless tag to check the receiving status of core equipment considering the characteristics of each item. Then, DB in the server system is built, status information is input. By implementing BIM 4D Simulation data using DELMIA, the information on location and status is provided. In terms of logistics digitization, the system’s features allow suppliers to monitor the real-time status of the 4D system provided on a Web basis, enabling suppliers to accurately identify and supply the delivery times for the facilities they need to manufacture and supply. Besides, the project progress control can be managed quickly and accurately by identifying the location of major delivered facilities in real-time to maximize the efficiency of construction, and by identifying the status information of major facilities, i.e. installation status in real-time. This digitalization ultimately results in savings in the manpower involved in the project and contributes to lower investment costs as a whole.