Since the end of the 18th century, the so-called industrial revolution brought formidable benefits to society, modernization, mechanization of industrial processes, the emergence of iron deposits, the appearance of the railroad, they provided enormous amounts of products and services, for the benefit of humanity, everything was fitting in with absolute perfection, society, businessmen and the government did not show any concern about the quantity and quality of pollutants that were generated.
However, today time is taking its toll on us, the world we inhabit is increasingly devastated, poisoned every second by industries, derived from this situation the government at different levels was prompted to legislate the activities carried out and the global impact they had on the environment, promoting recovery, recycling and reuse of products.
reverse-logistics-a-better-worldOn the other hand, it is necessary to highlight that reverse logistics represents a great area of opportunity for companies, achieving cost reduction, this concept is projected as one of the best businesses of the third millennium, the idea of reusing the goods that we discard will be a factor economic preponderant, one of the main challenges will be to achieve a cultural change acquired decades ago of "using" and "throwing away"
This document will present the basic principles of reverse logistics, its characteristics and procedures, as well as provide an overview of the bilateral benefits that a socially responsible company represents for the environment.
A definition of the concepts used will be made, such as: "sustainable development"
DEFINITION AND BACKGROUND
A vague idea of what reverse logistics means made its appearance in the 70's by the hand of Ginter and Starling when they began to use terms such as: "reverse channels" or "reverse logistics flows" directly related to recycling, however the idea did not have much echo in the field.
Several years later, in the 90's, the term “reverse logistics” emerged, coined by James Stock in 1992, clearly defining “the flow that involves the reuse of products and materials and that is opposite to the conventional flow of the supply chain ”, Stock (1992)
A very important concept is the one that emerged in 1995 defining “Recovered Products Management, whose objective is“ to recover as much economic (and ecological) value as possible, thus reducing the final amounts of waste ”Van Nunen and Van Wassenhove (1995)
Finally in 2004 the reverse logistics group founded several years ago gave rise to the most complete term we know today, "the process of planning, implementation and control of the flow of materials, inventories in progress and finished products, as well as the related information, from the point of manufacture, distribution, or use, towards the point of its recovery or point for its correct elimination ”, De Britto and Dekker (2004)
Over the years this concept has taken on more and more strength, achieving objectives such as the signing of the Environment Program, carried out by the European Union at the beginning of the year 2000, in Latin American countries the terms of collection and disposal are regulated. end of waste, in Mexico for example, the regulatory body is SEMARNAT.
DESCRIPTION
To correctly recover the products, it is necessary to carry out the implementation of efficient logistics systems whose purpose is to channel the products discarded by the consumer into the hands of the producer to re-enter them into the supply chain or to carry out their correct disposal.
The following concept needs to be identified for the description of this process.
Raw material: The initial constitution of a product, its characteristics will define the characteristics of the product, such as resistance, functionality, among others.
Fleischmann stated that an end-of-life product should be classified by its degree of decomposition into:
Reuse: It maintains its identity, no decomposition.
Repair: Low decomposition, requires replacement of some components
Re-manufacture: Medium - high decomposition, only certain pieces of the product are recovered.
Recycling: Only the raw material is recovered, losing the identity of the product.
For a reverse logistics system to work, certain functions or cycles must be carried out.
Reception of products: In this stage is when the quantity of recovered product is identified, as well as the time in which the activity will be carried out, storage processes, transport and definition of characteristics of the batch of recovered products are defined.
Inspection and classification: The product will be inspected to verify the quality of the recovered product, the necessary disassembly and cleaning will be carried out to begin the necessary tests. Application of the 3 R's: At this stage is when the appropriate process is defined according to the characteristics of the product, that is, the inventory levels of the raw material will be increased using recycling, parts or sections of re-use products will be integrated into the product line close to finalizing or reusing the products in a new market, after your repair verification.
Distribution: They will be reincorporated back to the market through adequate distribution lines.
Elimination: When the quality levels are not the minimum necessary, the product will have a final disposal, the company is committed to carry it out in the most appropriate way possible, that is, through landfills or incineration regulated by the applicable regulations in force.
TYPES OF LOGISTICS
Returns logistics
When a product sold does not meet the customer's requirements, it is returned to the factory which can reuse its components or redirect the product and this does not generate a loss to the organization.
"Approximately 6% of a company's products sold is returned", Stock, (2011), but this figure will vary depending on the market to which it is directed.
In some cases, when a product does not present failures or in its defect it has already been repaired or manufactured again, it can go on sale as a returned product, exploiting the existence of secondary markets and decreasing or in many cases eliminating the loss.
Another very viable way to direct returns is through social work, the donation of items obviously without failures to different institutions such as foundations or charities, in many countries of the world, this type of contributions bring with them tax benefits that it provides government.
Recovery logistics
To make an addition to the value of a recovered product there are different phases such as:
Repair: When a product suffers any damage, the company provides a customer service to carry out its repair in specialized centers or in their own home, this to avoid the return of the products.
Re-manufacturing consists of breaking up the product, reusing the greatest amount of material to lower costs to a lower level than the one manufactured in the first instance
The benefit to the environment is one of the factors that has prompted the development of this concept because it has been detected that it is possible to reduce the levels of pollution derived from logistics activities, caused by "empty" trips that some companies carry out as part of their activities
ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF THE REVERSE LOGISTICS APPLICATION
Companies are beginning to become truly aware of the economic returns that the recovery of products and waste materials offers them, even taking them to levels that raise their competitive levels with respect to the competition.
"An economic system reaches its maximum efficiency when each of the elements that comprise it in turn reach maximum efficiency by themselves" Adam Smith, (1780)
"An economic system reaches its maximum degree of efficiency when the parts that compose it look for it for themselves, at the same time that they do it for the set of parts that make it up" John F. Nash, (1994)
When a company recovers materials that have already been discarded by customers, these can be reused as raw materials or as accessories or additional elements, respectively, which would lead to a reduction in manufacturing costs.
On the other hand, when a company becomes socially committed, the marketing that is managed in its environment, projecting it as an organization based on recycled products, using clean technologies and integrating an environmental strategy into the supply chain, becomes an option. most used by consumers engaged in this area.
When the flow of reuse materials is efficient, the capabilities of the company are increased by developing its potential and thus reaching what is called a sustainable competitive advantage, which means achieving differentiation from competitors, that the company is identified and recognized by the market to which it is directed
When an economic evaluation of the performance of an organization in reverse logistics processes is carried out, a reference point is used and a comparison is made with the results of not applying said system, a clear example is in the recycling area, when it is put If the final waste is properly underway, and the sanitary landfills and therefore their pollutants, the expenses in reducing continuous monitoring of said landfills will be less, due to the amount generated.
ROA ANALYSIS (Return Over Assets)
Profitability analysis is used to make a comparison between the logistical means used by the organization and those proposed, in this activity the income levels due to the improvement of services are compared.
It is used as a tool in the comprehensive analysis of the profitability of logistics, it directly measures the impact of the reverse logistics applied using the following means:
- Increase in short, medium and long-term revenue through increased sales of reused items Reduction of operating expenses and costs of finished products Rotation of material inventories
REVERSE LOGISTICS APPLIED
For an organization to be able to institute a reverse logistics program, various factors must be taken into account, strategies must be formulated based on decision-making, which can be divided into:
Strategic decisions: which will define the long-term objective, capacity of the organization, distribution, storage, etc.
This procedure must be carried out in the opposite direction to the supply chain, that is, from the point where they were used to their origin, its objective is to minimize environmental impacts and consequently bring a benefit to the organization.
To implement a system in an organization, it will be necessary to carry out a study and planning, through the use of different instruments such as surveys, collect company data, form a group to analyze and process data who generate direct recommendations for the application of this system.
They should analyze data such as the size of the organization, the impact it generates on society, the characteristics of the product that is generated, the socioeconomic sector to which it is directed.
Once these data have been analyzed, factors such as:
Uncontrollable returns must be deployed primarily to be handled in the best possible way.
On multiple occasions, the centers where the product will be distributed was not manufactured to handle the collection of the product.
When a product has a short life cycle, it is very possible that it requires a higher investment for efficient collection.
Caution must be taken not to make the most common mistakes in the development of this type of system, which are:
Reverse logistics is identified as an expense and not as an advantage or addition to the value of the product that will mean an advantage in the market.
Suppose that the responsibility of an organization ends once the consumer has purchased the product in a distribution center.
Lack of allocation of both material, human and financial resources to reverse logistics programs, identifying them as an independent program and not as a variant of conventional logistics programs.
Downplaying the return of reused materials in terms of costs, these usually obtain lower priority of attention in the lines, which causes inventories to rise and costs to increase.
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