Developing a Theory of Reverse Logistics

Reverse logistics, a fairly new concept in logistics, has gained increasing importance as a profitable and sustainable business strategy. I describe a holistic view of reverse logistics and distill 11 insights for successful implementation of reverse logistics from the existing literature and published case studies. The strategic factors consist of strategic costs, overall quality, customer service, environmental concerns, and legislative concerns. The operational factors consist of cost-benefit analysis, transportation, warehousing, supply management, remanufacturing and recycling, and packaging. Insights about these factors together form the state-of-the-art knowledge about the keys to successful design and use of reverse-logistics systems.