Quantifying impacts of product return uncertainty on economic and environmental performances of product configuration design

The product returns involve considerable uncertainties that have an impact on the economic (i.e., total cost) and environmental (i.e., global warming potential, water use and energy use) performance measures of a product configuration design. This is because it directly affects the number of reusable, remanufacturable and/or recyclable components/items. However, impact of the uncertainty of product return rate on the economic and environmental performance of new product configuration designs has not been addressed in literature. In this study, a methodology is proposed to quantify the impact of product return rate uncertainty using Monte Carlo simulation. The proposed methodology is implemented on an industrial case study for quantifying the impact of product return rate uncertainty on the economic and environmental performance of toner cartridge configuration designs. The results of this study can provide useful information on the variation of total lifecycle cost, global warming potential, total water use, and total energy use of product configuration designs due to the uncertainty of product return rate.