Petroleum

1. Introduction

Reverse logistics (RL) has received considerable attention due

to potentials of value recovery from the used products. Besides,

legislations and directives, consumer awareness and social responsibilities

towards environment are also the drivers for RL (Melnyk

et al., 1999; Ferrer and Ayres, 2000; Bloemhof and van Nunen,

2005; Ravi and Shankar, 2005; Cooper, 1994; Yang, 1995; Boks

et al., 1998; Castell et al., 2004). The growing importance of

research in RL has also been highlighted by many authors (see

for example, Jones, 1992; New, 1997; Ayres et al., 1997; Handfield

and Nichols, 1999). The focus on RL is on waste management,

material recovery (recycling), parts recovery or product recovery

(through remanufacturing). However, as the recovered products

face competition from the new products, the investment on product

recovery becomes a risky venture (Horvath et al., 2005). The

cost of recovered products can be reduced by optimal locations and

allocations of facilities in RL (Ferrer and Whybark, 2000; Prallinski

and Kocabasoglu, 2006).

Research on RL has been growing since the Sixties (see, for example,

Zikmund and Stanton, 1971; Gilson, 1973; Schary, 1977; Fuller,

1978). Research on strategies and models on RL can be seen in the

publications in and after the Eighties. However, efforts to synthesize

the research in an integrated broad-based body of knowledge

have been limited. Most research focuses only on a small area

of RL systems, such as network design, production planning or

environmental issues. Fleischmann et al. (1997) studied RL from

the perspectives of distribution planning, inventory control and

production planning. Carter and Ellram(1998) focused on the transportation

and packaging, purchasing and environmental aspects in

their review of RL literature. Linton et al. (2007) studied the interactions

between sustainability and supply chains by considering

environmental issues regarding product design, product life extension

and product recovery at end-of-life. Rubio et al. (2008) have

also reviewed the literature on RL published between 1995 and

2005 by focusing on management of the recovery, distribution of

end-of-life products, production planning and inventory management,

and supply chain management issues. The review presented

in this paper extends the review to consider important features

of reverse logistics such as product acquisition, pricing, collection

of used products, RL network structure vis-à-vis the integration of

manufacturing, and remanufacturing facilities of location of facilities

for inspection and consolidation activity. The literature review

covers published research until 2008.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In the next section

research methodology is discussed. In Section 3, the result of

review is presented. Each section is divided further into subsections

to highlight various factors that are important to this research.

The paper ends with conclusions and some thoughts on further

research.

2. Review methodology

We have adopted content analysis method for literature review.

Content analysis is an observational research method that is used

to systematically evaluate the symbolic content of all forms of

recorded communication (Kolbe and Brunette, 1991). This method

also helps to identify the literature in terms of various categories

(Li and Cavusgil, 1995), thereby creating a realm of research opportunities

(Berelson, 1952; Krippendorff, 1980; Kolbe and Brunette,

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