Selection of remanufacturing/production cycles with an alternative market: a perspective on waste management

Reduction of waiting time and waste directly improves the quality of supply chain and its sequence. The cost and energy consumption vary thereby resulting in an evolving sustainability. This paper investigates the policy that proves the optimum in reduction of such time and the condition, under which the said policies can be feasible. A mathematical model has been developed to analyse two approaches of the replenishment cycles with respect to the waste management. A closed-structured supply chain model has been considered with a primary and secondary market concepts having overlapped and in sequence manufacturing/remanufacturing policies. Through an analytical model, the minimization of total cost has been achieved. Some solutions of the decision variables are obtained in quasi-closed form. The way to use the used or waste from primary supply chain is found very useful for the secondary supply chain. Numerical study finds that the waiting time for the primary market is reduced by 84.62% and the cost is decreased by 1.38% by adopting the right policy such that the waste is reduced remarkably.