Optimal Reverse Supply Chain Design: The Case of Empty Agrochemical Containers

Abstract

The growing use of agrochemicals added to the harm that contaminated containers cause to the environment and to the health of the population, make it necessary to establish a reverse supply chain for the recovery and correct treatment of empty containers. Current regulations establish that they must be triple-rinsed and sent to collection centers, where containers are consolidated and shipped to treatment/recycling plants. Containers can also be sent to these plants directly. Given this problem, this contribution proposes an MILP multi-period model to define the optimal configuration and operation of the reverse supply chain network of empty agrochemical containers along a given planning horizon. Provided a superstructure including farms and the location of the potential nodes (collection centers and plastic treatment plants), the model determines which facilities to install and when, their corresponding sizes, as well as how they would operate along the planning horizon. In addition, the model establishes the material flows among the various nodes in each planning period (network topology). The proposed model has been verified by addressing a realistic case study, which has been solved under different scenarios, exhibiting good computational performance. The obtained results allow reaching satisfactory conclusions in relation to model scalability and sensitivity.