The Multiple-Vehicle Transportation Policy under the High Uncertainty of the Returns in Reverse Logistics

A model with respect to the reverse logistics system in which consisting of a depot and lots of dispersed customers is developed and analyzed. The depot owned vehicles are utilized to pick up all or parts of the returned products during their deliveries trips with possibility of postponing pick-ups of some returned products. To deal with the high uncertainty of the returns, the variable of inventory buffer and quality coefficient are introduced in the model. To solve the problem, a heuristic algorithm is designed, which customers are clustered firstly and then clusters are adjusted by insertion algorithm based on TSP. Our proposed algorithm is successfully applied to a case and the result indicates the algorithm is practicable arid valid.