An extended production/recycling model with stationary demand and return rates

A production-recycling system is investigated. A constant demand can be satisfied with production and recycling. The used items are bought back and then recycled. The non-recycled products are disposed of. Two types of models will be analyzed. The first model examines the EOQ-related costs and minimizes the relevant costs. The second model generalizes the first model with the introduction of the cost function with linear waste disposal, recycling, production and buyback costs. It is asked whether the pure (either production or recycling) or mixed strategies are optimal and it will be shown that under these circumstances the mixed strategies are dominated by the pure strategies. The paper generalizes a former model proposed by the authors for the case of one recycling and one production batch to the case of arbitrary batch numbers. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.