Abstract- This paper discusses cooperation and profits sharingof a triple-echelon Reverse Supply Chain (RSC) composed of one manufacturer,one third party logistics provider and retailers from the perspective of differentoutsourcing degrees. Divided the RSCcooperation into three degrees, it models and analyzes the variances of productprice, product recovery rate, firm’s profits, customer benefits, resources reuse and overall profits. Cooperationprofits are distributed by using the Shapley value method. Conclusions arereached that firms, customers andnatural environment achieves awin-win-win status, which means that product retail price is falling and returnrates, overall profits, individual profits are rising with the deepening outsouringcooperation of RSC. Reduced price benefits more consumers and increased returnrate improves the reuse of natural resources.
Keywords- ReverseSupply Chain, Cooperation, Product Take-back, Shapley Value Algorithm, ProfitAllocation
I. INTRODUCTION
Since V. Daniel R. Guider Jr[1]has definedthe Reverse supply chain (RSC), it has been a hot spot intheacademic and industry communities. While one existing problem to perform RSCsystem for most of manufacturers is the high operation costs in the recovery system.Individual firms, especially manufacturers should cooperate closely with othermembers in supply chain to return products. Therefore, studying the RSCcooperation has great significance.
At present, supply chaincooperation researches mainly focus on the forward supply chain[2-3],and RSC cooperation is becoming a hot research topic. R. Canan Savaskan et al(2004)[4]and Yaoweixin[5]discussed the return models in the RSC system and come to conclusionsthat collecting products by retailers is more efficient than by manufacturers.