Elham Sadeghi - Department of Industrial Engineering, Payame-Noor University, Tehran, Iran
Hamed Fazlollahtabar - Faculty of Industrial Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran

Reverse supply chain is a process dealing with the backward flows of used/damagedproducts or materials. Reverse supply chain includes activities such as collection, inspection, reprocess, disposal and redistribution. A well-organized reverse supply chain can provide important advantages such as economic and environmental ones. In this study, we propose a configuration in which quality assurance is a substantial operation to be fulfilled in the reverse chain so that to minimize the total costs of the reverse supply chain. A mathematical model is formulated for product return in reverse supply chainconsidering quality assurance. We consider a multilayer, multi-product for the model. The main objective of the paper is minimizing the total costs of reverse supply chain with respect to inspection.

Reverse Supply Chain, Product Return, Quality inspection, Mathematical Model