It is inevitable that technological improvements have affected human’s life in any aspect to a large extent. Automation, artificial intelligence, robotics, etc., are some advances contributed to the fourth industrial revolution: Industry 4.0. Despite there are still many arguments, Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) have been widely acknowledged as the main fundaments of ...

With the rapid technological advancement and innovation in Industry 4.0/5.0, digitalization has become the mainstream that transforms the paradigm of many industries, businesses, and services. In this regard, AI-enabled chatbots have been increasingly adopted by many companies for providing customer services instead of human agents. On the one hand, the use of AI-enabled chatbots provides opportunities ...

Reverse logistics has received more and more attention during the past decade due to the increasing public awareness of sustainable development. Because of the fluctuation in both quantity and quality of the reverse material flow, design and planning of reverse logistics network is much more complicated comparing with the forward ones. Therefore, it is important to develop decision support tools for ...

Nowadays, increasing number of companies incorporates the reverse logistics decisions into their supply chain design in order to cope with the enforced international and national legislation and improve the resource efficiency and public image. This paper investigates a new stochastic optimization model for designing a single-period multiproduct multi-level reverse logistics system under government ...

Manufacturing companies require efficient maintenance practices in order to improve business performance, ensure equipment availability and reduce process downtime. With the advent of new technology, manufacturing processes are evolving from the traditional ways into digitalized manufacturing. This transformation enables systems and machines to be connected in complex networks as a collaborative ...

The outbreak of an epidemic disease may pose significant treats to human beings and may further lead to a global crisis. In order to control the spread of an epidemic, the effective management of rapidly increased medical waste through establishing a temporary reverse logistics system is of vital importance. However, no research has been conducted with the focus on the design of an epidemic reverse ...

Due to recent technological advancements, more diversified customer demand, and increasingly harder competition, traditional postal service systems have experienced significant changes all over the world. In Norway, through a strategic reform called post-in-shop, undertaken in 2013, most postal services are now provided at postal service counters located in retailer stores in order to improve ...

Nowadays, due to the concern of environmental challenges, global warming and climate change, companies across the globe have increasingly focused on the sustainable operations and management of their supply chains. Closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) is a new concept and practice, which combines both traditional forward supply chain and reverse logistics in order to simultaneously maximize the utilization ...

Today, the increased public concern for sustainable development and more stringent environmental regulations have become the most important driving forces for value recovery from end-of-life and end-of use products through reverse logistics. Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) contains both valuable components that need to be recycled and hazardous substances that have to be properly ...

The recent advancement of digitalization and information and communication technology (ICT) has not only shifted the manufacturing paradigm towards the Fourth Industrial Revolution, namely Industry 4.0, but also provided opportunities for a smart logistics transformation. Despite studies have focused on improving the smartness, connectivity, and autonomy of isolated logistics operations with a primary ...