Designing Reverse Logistics Systems for enabling the Take-Back of End-of- Use and End-of-Life Products: Development of a configuration system support for manufacturing companies

Reverse Logistics (RL) of end-of-use and end-of-life products has gained significant industry attention as one of the pivotal enablers of a circular economy. RL, often also described as takeback or reverse supply chain, deals with the effective and efficient management of the activities required to retrieve a product from a customer to either dispose of it or recover value. Amid the transgression of six of the nine planetary boundaries, increasing stakeholder pressure, and legislative push towards Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), companies increasingly realise the importance of RL. However, they often face challenges in designing and implementing RL systems.

Designing a RL system is a multifaceted and a complex task which is influenced by numerous regulatory, technological, infrastructural, business, geographical factors and stakeholders. Given this complexity, the lack of knowledge and experience in designing RL systems is one of the many critical success factors that companies must address when designing and implementing reverse logistics, along with financial, infrastructural, regulatory and many other considerations. Thus far, there is little evidence of a solid and systematic support to help overcome this knowledge gap and aid the design, development, and implementation of RL systems, both in the academic literature and the industry as a whole, where the successful application of RL will likely be dependent on de facto industry standards being developed. Support is thus most needed in terms of systematised configuration support that can provide a step-by-step approach to guide companies through designing, configuring, and/or customising the RL system to their specific needs and preferences.

The Design Research Methodology (DRM) was employed to develop a comprehensive support tool for enabling manufacturing companies to design RL systems for end-of-use and end-of-life products. The methodology encompassed iterative cycles to describe, prescribe, and evaluate the support, based on a mixed methods approach (incl. systematic literature review, exploratory case study, conceptualisation and development and evaluation by academic experts and practitioners). As part of the first descriptive study (DS-I), a systematic review of the academic literature and an exploratory case study of a RL system designed by a case company was performed to identify the key attributes related to the design and implementation of RL systems. A MS Excel based functional prototype of the configuration system support was developed in the prescriptive phase. This involved development of the knowledge base in the form of a graphical feature model, the conversion of feature model into a MS Excel-based configurator and finally a user interface (frontend) to help users navigate the support tool. In the subsequent cycles, four manufacturing companies, 10 Researchers and over 80 Students associated with the field of Circular Economy were engaged in the evaluation and further empirical development of the proposed support for RL design, resulting in the final version of the support.

Four principal results are presented in the thesis. First, a conceptual framework is presented covering the key activities, drivers and barriers, stakeholder engagement and performance management in RL. Second, a descriptive single case of the RL initiatives via an exploratory case study with a company designing disposable medical devices in homecare settings provides a practical approach for developing and implementing RL. Third, a systematised framework to design
and operationalise EPR policy instruments and the related EPR system architecture. Fourth, a support tool for designing RL, based on the principles of configuration system, together with a PlayBook and other support tools that provide additional information and contextual insights into the various dimensions of RL to enhance the understanding of users and to facilitate decision-making.

The in-depth evaluations of the proposed support with four manufacturing companies for different products, such as circulation pumps for heating and air conditioning systems, consumer electronic products and a range of disposable plastic and polymer-based medical devices demonstrated that their application was helpful for practitioners responsible for RL planning in addressing the knowledge gaps, stimulating discussions among stakeholders for building scenarios i.e. options of RL system design and analysing how different scenarios might work. Scientifically, this thesis contributes with a new structure to the field of RL, including analytical framing of RL characteristics, synthesis of support to translate these characteristics into applied decisions, and interpretation of the growing regulatory landscape for EPR.