Reverse Logistic Network Design and Analysis for E-Waste Management System: A Case of Akaki Compute Refurbishment and Training Facility

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Date

2019

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Publisher

Addis Ababa University

Abstract

Electrical and electronic equipment waste, (E-Waste) in short is a recent emerging waste. It is known that sales of electronics and electrical equipment have undergone explosive growth worldwide, while at the same time, the life cycles of equipment have been getting shorter. This has resulted in large numbers of e-waste being generated, which causes problems of environmental sustainability, health and economic loss that each country has to face. To manage these problems, the concept of Reverse Logistic (RL) has gained much attention due to the growing concern of environment and efficient utilization of resources. This study identified existence of improper network for e-waste collection system, undetermined collection center capacity and costs for e-waste collection and lack of properly designed e-waste reprocessing system problems and solved for Akaki Computer Refurbishment and Training Facility (ACRTF). The thesis focused on designing and analyzing a reverse logistics network of e-waste management system for ACRTF with a goal of designing optimal collection system, selecting location facility from potential generating sites, suggesting methods of re-processing e-waste and design of RL network for e-waste management. To achieve the research objective, primary and secondary data were collected and analyzed to develop clear concepts and design the research. Data was collected from the case facility and analyzed focusing on identifying potential generating site, future accumulation of e-wastes, designing optimal collection facility and formulating methods of re-processing e-waste. The study used certain tools to analysis collected data and to design the RL network. MS excel and SPSS for categorizing and analyzing collected data from the case study, Google Earth Pro to locate e-waste generating sites and collection facilities and LINGO 18.0 to evaluate and select the optimal collection facility are the tools used in this study. From the results of analyzed data, the study found that 71,124 sales and 53,344 waste amount of e-waste is expected to be generated from potential generating sites (PGS) at 2025. Decentralized collection system is optimal with 44.14 ton of e-waste, 2,214.94 Km of total distance, incurred total cost of 1385.856 birr from PGS to re-processing facility (RF) and total profit 499,799.52 birr from collected e-waste. Hence, the study found out that such amount of opportunity can be exploited if appropriate design of reverse logistics networks is implemented. In the study, it is recommended that end user of electrical and electronic equipment, the government policy on the sustainable environmental protection and resource recovery and the reprocessing facility should be awaked and all of which have a great implication on strategic implementation of reverse logistics network design.

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Keywords

Training Facility, Reverse Logistic Network Design, E-Waste Management System

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