Search Results (95)

In response to growing environmental pressures and material constraints, circular economy principles are gaining traction across manufacturing sectors. However, most existing frameworks emphasize design and supply chain considerations, with limited focus on how circularity can be operationalized within internal manufacturing systems. This paper proposes a conceptual model that embeds circular operations at the core of production strategy. Grounded in circular economy theory, operations management, and socio-technical systems thinking, the model identifies four key operational pillars: circular input management, looping process and waste valorization, product-life extension, and reverse logistics. These are supported by enabling factors—digital infrastructure, organizational culture, and leadership—and mediated by operational flexibility, which facilitates adaptive, closed-loop performance. The model aims to align internal processes with long-term sustainability outcomes, specifically resource efficiency and operational resilience. Practical implications are outlined for resource-intensive industries such as automotive, electronics, and FMCG, along with a readiness assessment framework for guiding implementation. This study offers a pathway for future empirical research and policy development by integrating circular logic into the structural and behavioral dimensions of operations. The model contributes to advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 9 and SDG 12, by positioning circularity as a regenerative operational strategy rather than a peripheral initiative. Full article

In reality, there is often information asymmetry between upstream and downstream enterprises in a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) system, which can have a profound impact on the decisions of member enterprises and the operation of the system. Under asymmetric market demand information, this study examines CSR input and recycling decision making in CLSC. Four decision-making models were developed for CLSC, and the effects of consumer sensitivity to CSR input and demand information asymmetry on CLSC optimization were studied. The results indicate that higher consumer sensitivity to CSR input enhances both CSR levels and recycling rates, benefiting both manufacturer and retailer by increasing profits. In terms of increasing CSR levels, the manufacturer achieves the best results when independently managing CSR input and recycling. However, for improving recycling rates and market demand, the retailer is more effective when responsible for CSR input, with the manufacturer handling recycling. Additionally, demand information asymmetry reduces the manufacturer’s profit but may not affect the retailer’s profit. The retailer–manufacturer cooperation model proves more beneficial for overall CLSC system performance compared to information symmetry. Full article

The field of closed-loop supply chain management (CLSCM) seeks to replace the linear flow of materials and energy with a cyclical model in which the outputs of the production system become inputs to the same system, thus closing the cycle of materials and energy within the supply chain. Current literature on CLSCM reports a wide variety of practices, and combining these practices with environmental performance measures is an ongoing challenge, mainly because results from these practices are often diffuse and linking them with performance results is not a straightforward task. This paper addresses this problem by proposing a model to prioritize CLSCM practices and performance measures. The correlation model integrating the fuzzy direct rating method (FDRM) and CLSCM practices and performance measures was tested in a real company that is part of a closed-loop supply chain that recycles lead obtained from automotive batteries in Brazil. The results allowed the identification of which management practices are more relevant to the organization by correlating their impact with performance measures. The most relevant practices for the company under study were demand forecasting, with 21.68% of relative importance, followed by reverse logistics practices (21.15%) and production planning and control (18.16%). Another relevant finding is that upstream performance measures account for 77.72% of the company’s CLSCM performance. Full article

In today’s fast-paced business settings, the metaverse as a shared marketplace has gained popularity and is helping businesses to develop crucial business strategies in their pursuit of sustainable performance. However, a lack of understanding and knowledge about the effectiveness of the metaverse and its related technologies creates a barrier. Therefore, the current study fills this gap and uses organizational information-processing theory to develop the theoretical framework to examine metaverse-related technologies (artificial intelligence and blockchain technology—BCT) and their direct and indirect effects on sustainable business performance, which no other study has examined. Using purposive sampling, the sample data from 326 SMEs were gathered and analyzed using a partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). This study’s findings revealed that AI capabilities are vital for information gathering, analyzing, and decision-making in the metaverse context. BCT facilitates ensuring a transparent, visible, traceable, and immutable supply chain, which helps make it more resilient and improves the closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) system with positive technological advancements and significant effects on increasing sustainable business performance (SBP). This study’s findings help organizations understand the potential benefits of AI-enabled SMEs’ presence in the metaverse. The current investigation provides a strategy for managers to gain a competitive advantage, make the supply chain more robust, and enhance overall business performance. Full article

This study explores low-carbon tech investment decisions in a closed-loop supply chain and their impact on supply chain optimization and relationships, using non-cooperative and cooperative game theories. This study examines the behavior patterns and potential gains of suppliers and manufacturers in independent vs. cooperative circumstances using model simulations. This study reveals that the following: (1) Optimal pricing, technology investment, profit, and cost-sharing ratios for low-carbon technologies can be determined under certain conditions to maximize stakeholder profits. (2) Suppliers and manufacturers can mutually benefit in supplier-driven markets. (3) Manufacturers have greater investment opportunities in low-carbon technology when suppliers have market power. (4) Provider utility decreases as consumer preference for low-carbon products rises. (5) The dominant market structure for low-carbon products evolves with the market stage. These findings provide strategic guidance for green supply chain management. The research presented in this paper offers a theoretical foundation and strategic direction for low-carbon technology investment in CLSCs. Full article

The transition from food waste to food security is a critical component of sustainability efforts. This approach focuses on repurposing organic waste products generated throughout the food supply chain into valuable resources. Food waste, encompassing everything from agricultural residues to post-consumer waste, represents a significant untapped potential that can be harnessed to enhance food security. By implementing strategies such as composting, bioconversion, and innovative recycling technologies, biowastes can be transformed into fertilizers, animal feed, and even new food products, thus closing the loop in the food system and aiding sustainable solutions for waste valorization. This transition not only addresses environmental concerns by reducing landfill waste and greenhouse gas emissions but also contributes to economic sustainability by creating new opportunities within the food production and waste management sectors. Ultimately, transforming food waste into a resource aligns with the broader goals of a circular economy, ensuring a sustainable, resilient, and food-secure future. Full article

The ability of closed-loop supply chains (CLSC) and reverse logistics (RL) to improve the triple bottom line (economic, social and environmental values) has increased the development of design and management models for CLSCs and RL. Consequently, there exists an extensive body of literature dedicated to exploring these supply and logistics issues. This paper reviews recent and relevant literature on CLSC and RL with an emphasis on uncertainty, carbon emissions, greenness index, return product quality and reliability considerations. The selected references are organized, reviewed, and analyzed to establish valuable mapping to highlight major findings. Finally, the outcomes are synthesized, and the primary research gaps are emphasized, pointing toward potential avenues for future investigation. These findings reveal that research efforts must be directed towards the development of multi-criteria greenness indices and multi-objective robust optimization models for uncertain quality and reliability of returns. Full article

Pesticides are essential to modern agriculture, significantly enhancing crop yields and quality to ensure global food security. Their critical role in preventing hunger is highlighted by the notable increase in global pesticide trade over the past decade. In Indonesia, pesticide usage has surged, with a 24% rise in registered pesticide formulations between 2017 and 2021. However, this increase presents challenges, particularly in the disposal of empty pesticide containers (EPC), which pose substantial environmental and health risks if improperly managed. To address this, a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) is proposed as an effective, eco-friendly solution for the management of EPC waste. This study evaluates the implementation of a CLSC for EPC in Indonesia, employing rich picture analysis and stakeholder interviews to identify key challenges, opportunities, and strengths. Notable challenges include regulatory gaps, financial and operational feasibility, and limited farmer engagement. However, opportunities exist in enhancing environmental sustainability, generating economic benefits, and gaining support from industry groups. One key strength is the widespread practice of triple rinsing among farmers, with 62.63% of respondents already adopting this method. This study underscores the important of establishing clear and enforceable regulations, introducing financial incentives and supportive policies, promoting public–private partnerships, creating targeted behavior change interventions, and ensuring organizational commitments and training programs. These insights are crucial in developing a sustainable CLSC, ensuring both environmental and economic benefits. Full article

This study centers on sustainable operations management within the energy sector, identifying and synthesizing effective strategies for integrating sustainability into business practices. We perform a systematic literature review covering contributions from January 2000 to June 2024 extracted from Web of Science and Scopus databases. The methodology includes an explicit search and selection protocol to ensure relevant and unbiased insights into the evolution of sustainable practices in the energy sector. The results indicate an increase in publications over the years, particularly in areas such as low-carbon economies, environmental management, and innovation, all of which are crucial for reducing carbon footprints and enhancing operational sustainability. This study categorizes existing research into five main streams: Closed Loop Supply Chains (CLSC), Low Carbon Economy (LCE), Environmental Management and Performance (EMP), Innovation (INN), and Social Responsibility (SR). The review underscores the significant gap between current practices and the potential for incorporating renewable energy sources into existing systems. In addition, it highlights the need for robust governmental policies and international cooperation in order to foster a more rapid transition towards sustainable operations on the energy sector. Furthermore, our findings suggest that despite technological advances, significant implementation gaps remain that require focused research and policy adjustments in order to achieve sustainability targets in the energy sector. Full article

Purpose: considering the resource-based view, embracing green supply chain management (GSCM) influences a firm’s performance (FP). This study finds the nexus between GSCM and FP by analyzing the reporting trends among the authors, countries, and sources along with collaboration among countries and authors, the emerging topics, and different themes in this field with their impact, centrality, and density. Lastly, it probes into the different methodologies, affiliating concepts, influencers, drivers, and impacts of GSCM through content analysis. Design/methodology/approach: this paper spotted 1518 documents narrowed down to 938, pertinent to GSCM and performance, utilizing the Scopus database. It uses sources, authors, word analysis, coupling, network analysis of keywords, social structure, and conceptual structure analysis in the Biblioshiny package of Rstudio (Version 4.4.0) to identify the progress in the fields spanning through the decade (2014–2023). Moreover, content analysis has been used to study the concepts and contexts of different themes identified through thematic analysis. Findings: the study found Journal of cleaner production in sources, Sarkis in authors, and China in countries to have the highest no. of documents. Closed-loop, digital, and circular supply chains and Industry 4.0 have been identified as the trending topics. Moreover, the key themes identified are (1) Supply Chain Optimization Models for Sustainability, (2) Affiliating concepts to, and the relationship between, Sustainable Supply Chain Strategies and TBL Performance in Manufacturing Sectors of Developing Countries, (3) Life Cycle Analysis of Natural-Resource Based Supply Chains for Sustainability Assessment on TBL, and (4) Factors Influencing and Performances Impacted by GSCM. Originality/Value: this research adds to the previous literature by analyzing both the concepts of GSCM and FP collectively, and finding new themes in between their intersection. Implications: it will direct future researchers in choosing the right theme, methodology, intervening variables, affiliating concepts, and country and author collaboration for the fields related to GSCM and FP. Full article

In an era where sustainability and efficient resource utilization are paramount, the closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) emerges as a critical approach, particularly in the context of perishable goods. The perishability of products adds a layer of complexity to supply chain management, necessitating innovative strategies for maximizing product life and minimizing waste. This comprehensive review article delves into the integration of perishable products within the framework of CLSC. The study thoroughly examines existing research to identify gaps and outline future research directions. It emphasizes the unique challenges and complexities of managing perishable goods, a crucial but often overlooked component in sustainable supply chain practices. The review highlights the balance between efficiency and sustainability, underscoring the importance of reverse logistics and circular economy principles in enhancing supply chain resilience. By synthesizing various methodologies and findings, the article presents a holistic view of the current state of perishable product management in CLSCs, offering valuable insights for academia and industry practitioners. The study not only contributes to the theoretical understanding of CLSCs, but also proposes practical approaches for their optimization, aligning with broader sustainability goals. Full article

Enterprises adopting a circular economy approach can effectively solve the severe situation of resources and the environment, and recycling is considered an effective means to solve environmental issues. Simultaneously, blockchain technology (BT) has been used to enhance product quality trust. However, there is limited literature on how to choose between monopolistic and competitive recycling modes by considering BT. This paper uses a game involving a manufacturer, a retailer, and a third-party recycler (TPR) in a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC). The retailer can recycle on itself and compete with the TPR for recycling used products. The results show that BT adoption could increase the recycling rate and demand for remanufactured products. BT benefits the firms in the CLSC when they control usage costs, regardless of whether competitive recycling mode is used or not. In addition, whether BT is adopted or not, CLSC firms prefer competitive recycling mode only when the competitive intensity exceeds a specific threshold. Moreover, choosing an appropriate recycling mode can alleviate the negative impact of BT on the environment, then an all-win result can be obtained for CLSC firms, consumers, and society. These results can give suggestions for managers to optimize their supply chains regarding adopting BT and implementing recycling mode. In the future, we can expand our research on the transfer price of used products, the positive and negative effects of BT, and BT cost-sharing strategies. Full article

With the rapid growth of the new energy vehicle market, efficient management of the closed-loop supply chain of power batteries has become an important issue. Effective closed-loop supply chain management is very critical, which is related to the efficient utilization of resources, environmental responsibility, and the realization of economic benefits. In this paper, the Markov Decision Process (MDP) is used to model the decision-making and coordination mechanism of the closed-loop supply chain of power batteries in order to cope with the challenges in the management process, such as cost, quality, and technological progress. By constructing the MDP model for different supply chain participants, this paper investigates the optimization strategy of the supply chain and applies two solution methods: dynamic programming and reinforcement learning. The case study results show that the model can effectively identify optimized supply chain decisions, improve the overall efficiency of the supply chain, and coordinate the interests among parties. The contribution of this study is to provide a new modeling framework for power battery recycling and to demonstrate the practicality and effectiveness of the method with empirical data. This study demonstrates that the Markov decision-making process can be a powerful tool for closed-loop supply chain management, promotes a deeper understanding of the complex decision-making environment of the supply chain, and provides a new solution path for decision-making and coordination in the supply chain. Full article

Background: Sustainable closed-loop supply chains have emerged as viable answers to supply chain problems. They can handle environmental damages (e.g., waste) and related social impacts. Closed-loop supply chains (CLSCs) are forward and reverse supply chain networks that have gained popularity in recent years. Recovery options such as reusing, remanufacturing and recycling can be considered in CLSCs. Methods: This paper provides a comprehensive evaluation of CLSC journal papers published between 2020 and the present. This study examines and synthesizes 54 papers from major publications in this area, covering a wide range of themes and approaches. This paper aims to respond to the following key questions: (i) What are the current trends and challenges in CLSC research, and how have they evolved since previous literature review papers? (ii) What key variables and objectives have been studied in recent CLSC research, and how have they been operationalized? (iii) What are the gaps and limitations in current CLSC research? To our knowledge, other literature review papers in this field have covered older papers, and recent papers have been ignored in them. Another research contribution of this paper is the taxonomy of it. Results: This review article highlights some developing themes and research gaps in the CLSC literature and makes recommendations for further study. Conclusions: This paper provides a comprehensive review of papers on closed-loop supply chain networks. Full article

Under the increasing environmental pressure, remanufacturing has increasingly become a new mode of recycling economy and upgrading and transforming the equipment manufacturing industry. Some enterprises include remanufacturing businesses in the original production system by holding or controlling shares in other remanufacturing enterprises. This paper builds a two-echelon supply chain model composed of a supplier, a manufacturer, and a remanufacturer, considering the different ownership structures (i.e., shareholding and share-controlling) between them, in which the supplier sells non-remanufacturable parts to the manufacturer and the remanufacturer. At the same time, the optimal decisions of each firm are considered. The results show that for the manufacturer, a higher shareholding ratio means that it can obtain more profits. For the supplier, the impact of the shareholding ratio depends on the manufacturing cost. When the manufacturing cost is relatively low, the stock sharing relationship between the manufacturer and the remanufacturer will decrease the supplier’s profit. When the manufacturing cost is relatively high, it will depend on the shareholding ratio. In the case of shareholding between the manufacturer and the remanufacturer, a higher shareholding ratio will decrease the supplier’s profit. From the perspective of the supply chain, when the production cost is high enough, the supply chain’s profit decreases first and then increases with the shareholding ratio. Furthermore, the increase in the manufacturer’s shareholding in remanufacturing does not always improve the remanufacturing proportion of products. Full article