Strategic planning and Operational planning in Reverse Logistics. A case study for Italian WEEE

This chapter presents a software platform, i.e. a decision-support system (DSS), for the strategic planning and operational planning in reverse logistics applied to a multi-stage collection network. The DSS is based on the application of original mixed-integer linear programming models (for strategic issues) and heuristic algo-rithms (for operational issues). The proposed models and solving methods have been applied to a case study of WEEE collection for the city of Bologna, Italy. The results obtained by a what-if analysis have been properly presented and justified. This study demonstrates the importance and effectiveness of a hierarchical approach in order to identify the best location of facilities, the allocation of customers (e.g. origination sites) de-mand to suppliers (e.g. collection sites), and the vehicle routing in accordance with different transportation modes.