A multi-objective mathematical programming for sustainable reverse logistics network design. Part I: Model formulation

Reverse logistics has received more and more attention during the past decade due to the increasing public awareness of sustainable development. Because of the fluctuation in both quantity and quality of the reverse material flow, design and planning of reverse logistics network is much more complicated comparing with the forward ones. Therefore, it is important to develop decision support tools for designing reverse logistics network in an economically efficient and environment-friendly manner. This research proposes a novel multi-objective mixed integer programming model in order to justify the relationship between the cost and sustainability of reverse logistics system, and the weighted sum utility method is employed for combining the two objective functions. This research is presented in a series of two papers. Part I formulates the conceptual framework of reverse logistics network and the mathematical programming for the minimization of the overall system cost and environmental influence. Part II introduces the weighted sum utility method for combining the two objective functions, and the application and analysis are also given in this part