Proactive Expediting Policies for Recoverable Manufacturing

Recoverable manufacturing is becoming an increasingly important alternative to companies as they develop strategies aimed at minimising waste and resources. Remanufacturing helps minimise costs and conserve resources through methods such as extending product life cycles via refurbishments and technical upgrades which require the use of only a fraction of the resources and energy associated with a new product. In this study proactive expediting policies that have been observed as managerial practice in remanufacturing environments are examined for their effectiveness. It is shown that in the remanufacturing environment, with its greater inherent uncertainty, product structure complexity significantly affects the choice of proactive expediting policy to employ if the practice is adhered to. It is also shown that this type of proactive expediting does not provide any significant benefits to the manager, on any of the performance measures analysed. The manager in this environment would be well advised to resist the temptation of using such a proactive expediting policy.