Logística Reversa: “Retos para la Ingeniería Industrial”

Abstract

The Environmental subject has been evolving from a normal concern due to the shortage of the natural resources, to an extensive concept of sustainability and development, that involves environmental, social and economic aspects; a development more impacting and complex each time. This gave rise solutions like recycling and remanufacturing; that have had to evolve with the same dynamism. Nevertheless, with out a logistic system all these policies will not have success that allows optimizing not only the matters and rejected products and their return to the productive system but also their connection with the traditional productive model. This article presents the following hypotheses; the pressure of the environmental, cultural and social tendencies, and the shortage of the natural resources, will demand to the manufacturing companies the development and optimization of Reverse Logistics. This Reverse Logistics is more complex to handle than direct logistic(towards ahead), because the high variability in factors as: forecasting, quality, standarization, confiability, etc. These becomes the most important challenges for Industrial Engineering; but the challenge is not only for the production area, also for the organizational structure and the companies policies. Finally, the optimization of the RL will demand their integration with the direct llogistics, in a single close system: the “Integral Logistic”. These hypotheses are comprobated by means of analysis and comparison of international experiences, with six especial national cases. But this study is only the first path that must be extended and more developed in the future.