A Bi-Level Programming For Reverse Logistics Network Design

Abstract

In this paper a nonlinear mixed integer bi-level programming model for designing a reverse logistics network is presented. The main goal for designing this network is to collect the End-of-Life (EOL) products and sending them for recycling in the supervision of the government. So the government purchased the EOLs from the customer zones and collects them in collection centers and then sells them to private sector for recycling. Government is the leader in this model and minimizes the total costs of purchasing and transportation of EOLs and defines the optimal price for purchasing and selling of EOLs. Private sector is considered as the follower and seeks to maximize its profit via recycling. Since the bi-level programming models are NP-hard, a heuristic approach based on the genetic algorithm has been applied to solve the presented bi-level model. Finally in this paper, results are given for an illustrative example.