A system dynamics approach for capacity planning within a closed-loop supply chain: A case study of lead-acid battery industry

Industries are now under high pressure to manufacture environmental-friendly products and collect the end-of-life products due to governmental obligations, social responsibilities, environmental issues, and increasing awareness of consumers. Reverse supply chain (logistics) problems deal with returning s and handling the end-of-life products. Accordingly, used products should dispose, recycle or recover efficiently. Managing of reverse supply chains confronts with higher degree of uncertainty and dynamism compared to forward chain. Therefore, capacity planning becomes more important to prevent excess capacity or penalties resulting from the loss of second-hand products. To this aim, a system dynamics approach is used in this paper to model the capacity planning Decisions in a lead-acid battery closed-loop supply chain. The product exchange policy and effect of green image on the supply chain performance are also considered in the developed model. The proposed model is implemented by Vensim software and the effect of various policies is simulated and analyzed.