Channel leadership, performance and coordination in closed loop supply chains

Abstract The business values of product remanufacturing have been well-recognized in the literature. Companies have also increasingly realized the importance of coordinating the closed-loop supply chains (CLSCs) with both manufacturing and re-manufacturing processes. In this paper, we investigate a CLSC which consists of a retailer, a collector, and a manufacturer, and examine the performance of different CLSC under different channel leadership. Through a systematic comparison, we find that the retailer-led model gives the most effective CLSC. Moreover, we analytically reveal that the remanufacturing system's efficiency is highly related to a supply chain agent's proximity to the market. Counter-intuitively, we show that the collector-led model is not the most effective model for collecting the used-product. We finally illustrate how both the serial and parallel CLSCs can be coordinated by using different kinds of practical contracts.