Closed‐loop supply chains with product remanufacturing: Challenges and opportunities
这篇社论梳理了再制造闭环供应链的研究现状，指出案例和模型研究居多，但缺乏实证联系；提出未来应关注实证驱动的分析模型、信息技术应用、消费者行为和政策设计，以推动循环经济落地。
The body of knowledge regarding remanufacturing's role in closed-loop supply chains (CLSC) has been dominated by case studies and analytic models (either empirically informed or fully stylized). The objective of this special issue is to offer insights into the pressure points in remanufacturing-focused CLSCs, identify and explore new policies and solutions that mitigate these pressure points, and outline future research opportunities. Research in this area uses various terms for closely related, if not identical, concepts: CLSC with remanufacturing, Reverse Logistics, OEM servicizing with product remanufacturing, and most recently, the Circular Economy (CE). While the CE literature has embarked on a vigorous effort to create a knowledgebase to develop systems that will be more environmentally friendly as well as economically viable, some of this knowledgebase already exists in the previous research in remanufacturing, reverse logistics, CLSCs, or product servicizing with remanufacturing. Efforts to re-develop this understanding from scratch are more likely to hold the field back rather than help it focus on issues that are different under the Circular Economy banner. The objective of this editorial is three-fold. First, we aim to identify significant research opportunities in CE that are not well-documented and for which new knowledge is needed. In doing so, we hope to highlight these knowledge gaps, map the research landscape of CLSCs with remanufacturing, and inspire future studies. Second, academic research often runs the risk of being insular and often, in the pursuit of academic excellence, somewhat disconnected with reality. We articulate the characteristics of future articles that would likely make them more impactful to industry, helping bring the social and environmental change that CE promises. Third, we describe the exemplars presented in this special issue that do have these characteristics with some important insights for making CE business models successful. We see several key opportunities to enhance our knowledge about CE based on CLSC with remanufacturing. The first opportunity is for a better connection between analytic models and empirical research findings. The call for empirically grounded analytic models was initially formulated by Choi and Guide in an editorial that outlined the need for empirically informed analytic studies (Choi & Guide, 2012a) and designed specific practical guidelines for empirically-informed analytic models (Choi & Guide, 2012b). We provide a summary of these guidelines here, as they establish the foundation for the philosophy of impactful analytical research, putting empirical grounding at the forefront of an applied research agenda. Specifically, Choi and Guide suggested that (a) the focus of studies should be on a managerially-relevant research questions, not a single instance of a problem, (b) parameter choices should be supported via data collected or provided by the firm, or by managerial judgment, and (c) the results of analytic modeling should be used to gain generalizable managerial insights from the research questions. Furthermore, they emphasized the need for researchers to exert substantial and tangible efforts in developing and applying a rigorous context exploration and data mining approach, maintaining evidence and traceability of their involvement with the company, and avoiding superfluous industry characterization and cursory data links: “remember that just spending a day watching ships in the harbor does not make you an expert at port scheduling. Most real-world research questions are complex and difficult to understand” (Choi & Guide, 2012b). Similar calls were outlined by other JOM editorial, for example, on modeling opportunities in operations management by Sterman et al. (2015), advancing technology management research by Heim et al. (2021), and public policy and operations management by Helper et al. (2021). Moreover, the JOM department of intervention-based research (formerly the department of design science) was established in 2016 with the mission of publishing studies that solve complex industry problems by being closely engaged with practice (Chandrasekaran et al., 2020; van Aken et al., 2016). Expanding and formalizing these concepts, de Treville et al. (2023) developed a framework that reiterated the need for empirically grounding analytics (the “left-hand” side) and emphasized the importance of addressing the “right-hand” side, that is the empirical application of analytical insights to actionable items in the industry. However, to this day, there is a noticeable lack of empirical connections in several research streams. For example, there is an extensive body of empirical knowledge about Product Acquisition Management (PrAM) (see Guide & Van Wassenhove, 2001; Mutha et al., 2016). PrAM is necessary in a CE since this is the sourcing function that manages the processes of acquiring used products (cores) from the marketplace. The complexity of PrAM varies among the types of CLSCs, but it is clear that many firms actively manage their PrAM processes. In contrast, a majority of analytic papers assume that remanufacturing firms have no control over their returns and that their cores simply appear based on some statistical distribution. There is also an empirical body of knowledge about consumer perceptions of remanufactured products that clearly establishes that consumer markets are not homogeneous perfect price takers (Abbey, Blackburn, et al., 2015; Abbey, Meloy, Blackburn, et al., 2015; Abbey, Meloy, Guide, et al., 2015; Guide & Li, 2010). Future analytical research should proactively seek to incorporate such empirical evidence about business practices and consumer markets. This integration may provide surprising and more relevant results. For example, it may be possible that analytic models based on heterogenous customer behavior may provide managerial recommendations that are opposite to those obtained using the traditional assumption of homogeneous markets. As such, relying on somewhat simple and stylized models in the quest for elegant mathematics (Figure 1a) might ignore the business realities of CE systems. Leveraging existing empirical findings into analytic models can only improve our knowledge about CE and help us develop recommendations that will find a place in managerial decision rooms. The role of technology (particularly IT) in facilitating traditional forward supply chains is well studied in an exhaustive literature (see Heim & Peng, 2022 for an extensive review of the long and successful track record of technology management research at JOM). In contrast, the role of IT has not received as much attention in the CLSC and CE literature even though IT can provide critical information for product and markets for such systems. However, in line with our opening remarks, we encourage researchers of CE and CLSC context to start from the existing knowledgebase. We concur with Heim et al. (2021), who suggested that successful exploratory studies of emerging technologies need to leverage the rich extant OM literature and identify advantages of a new technology in terms of its specific impact on OM performance, management, and capabilities (Heim et al., 2021). For example, an early work by Klausner et al. (1998) discusses the use of a data logger chip in Bosch power tools to facilitate product disposition (recycle or remanufacture) at the point of return. Both Xerox High Speed Imaging and Schlumberger have data enabled devices that are capable of reporting on the health of their products in the field (Mutha et al., 2022). While this information has the potential to reduce downtime due to unscheduled maintenance, customers in several industries are often reluctant to allow remote monitoring of their equipment at the customer's site. The emerging Internet of Things (IoT) would provide even more granular information. Future analytic models in CE need to incorporate the impact of reduced variability in failure detection and prevention by considering the use of IT. Empirical studies should explore the factors that determine the successful use of IT in CE. CE promises to be a panacea. However, like any system it has its own limitations. Understanding these limitations is important in order to be realistic about how effective it will be in practice for providing environmental and economic benefits to consumers and firms. For example, as highlighted by studies in this special issue, the potential for CLSCs based on remanufacturing in consumer-facing industries is limited by high sensitivity of consumers to physical appearance and their acute perception of quality. Hence, exploring CE configurations in various B2B settings spanning different industries presents a promising avenue for future research. Contracting is another domain where traditional channels and contracts may not be effective. In the least, there is a need to understand how these contracts will perform in CE environments, and, where necessary, identify new contracts that will be useful for product servicizing that is central to CE systems. CE systems also might be limited in their efficacy because of behavioral reasons. CE systems tend to be more complex and therefore the cost of behavioral decision making is likely to be higher in such systems. Understanding the drivers of this cost of managerial decision making and documenting its magnitude is an important but unexplored area of research. As such, there are no frameworks that help academics and practitioners in assessing when CLSCs are profitable, and what economic conditions are conducive to CLSCs with remanufactured products. Given the potential impact of CE systems on environment and society, it would be important to recognize context-specific policy instruments that will be needed to support the circular economy business model when these models are not inherently profitable for firms (e.g., apparel and textiles, as shown by an article by Denizel & Schumm, 2023 in this special issue). What kind of incentives should governments provide to manufacturers, end consumers, and other partners in this ecosystem? Do penalties work better than incentives to encourage the adoption of the CE paradigm? Answers to these questions require careful empirical work and forward-looking studies that use advanced methods in order to realistically incorporate complexities of public policies and explore variability in outcomes driven by multiple feedbacks, leading to the classical tradeoff between short-term and long-term effects (cf. Sterman et al., 2015). We encourage scholars to follow the guidelines outlined in a recent JOM editorial on public policy and operations management, focusing on: (a) exploring the impact of public policy on OM and SC, and (b) making specific recommendations for public policy (see Helper et al., 2021, particularly section 5.1). In the context of CE and CLSC, we want to emphasize the second point, or the need for research that provides concrete recommendations for the design of public policies, including research on public reaction to policies imposed by governments in an effort to achieve specific end results. In this section, we outline fundamental properties of research aimed at supporting CE implementation and the realization of its benefits by bridging an emerging gap between theory and practice. We know that there are a wide variety of systems that rely on returned products being put back in circulation for repeat uses, and the basic processes (product acquisition management, reverse logistics, remanufacturing, marketing) are present in all the cases examined, but the difficulty of controlling the processes can vary widely (see, e.g., Abbey & Guide, 2018 for a comprehensive overview of remanufacturing typology). For example, the challenges in managing returns for clothes are vastly different than those for managing returns for consumer electronics items, or utility items such as bikes in a bike-share program (Figure 1b). A firm's ability and financial feasibility to collect returns also varies based on product type, its geographical dispersion, and its size. These is an acute need to identify and classify salient typologies of CE systems based on these product and market dimensions, and then develop insights that are specific to these contextual details. The over-generalization of CE systems, such as in Figure 1a, in a quest for universal managerial rules or insights can harm the field rather than develop it in an area of relevant research. Traditional academic research, especially focused on modeling, prizes mathematical elegance of models and solutions. In contrast, practitioners and managers value insights that may not necessarily be expressed using elegant mathematical formulas but rather are based on complex real picture. While academicians always hope that the problems that they are trying to address can be sufficiently represented and solved tractably, this is often not the case. Multi-method studies tend to provide complementary evidence for results in such cases. Analytical models might be able to provide a first-cut understanding of cause-effect relationship which can be then further tested using empirical data. CE Systems are innately more complex than traditional supply chains and therefore there is indeed a strong need to incorporate their realism in any analysis in order for the analysis to be informative. There are indeed a lot of low hanging fruits of research in managing CE systems many of which we have articulated above. Avenues of research are low hanging in that the magnitude of their impact in the improvement of managing CE systems is likely to be large. In the near term, as the field develops it is important to keep an eye on these research avenues. One way to encourage researchers to identify such opportunities and explore them on a priority basis is to encourage a quantification of the benefits from their findings. These benefits could be in terms of percentage reduction in materials or energy used; or an improvement in profits or reduction in cost; supply chain factors such as increased service levels or fill rates; or improving the human dimension of performance for managing these systems. The articles in the special issue showcase the characteristics described above. Denizel and Schumm (2023) examine apparel and textile (AT) CEs and discuss the challenges and differences relative to CEs commonly used in other industries, such as consumer electronics. The authors find industry level differences in product acquisition, processing, and material recycling. They note that the scalability of remanufacturing processes within the AT industry presents a significant challenge due to their labor-intensive and time-consuming nature. One of the greatest differences is that AT CEs are not, for the most part, profitable (while remanufacturing is a profitable activity in many industry sectors). This lack of profitability is attributed to scalability issues, impacting the ability to efficiently process used garments, and affecting the economic viability of remanufacturing initiatives. Additionally, the limited availability of high-quality end-of-use garments suitable for recycling presents challenges due to inconsistent quantities and technological limitations in recycling processes to efficiently handle a broader range of materials. Furthermore, consumer electronic products are typically designed with transferable modular parts and components that enable component-level remanufacturing or repurposing, unlike the AT industry, where components of end-of-use garments cannot be easily transferred to another garment. This work also highlights important differences in acquisition strategies between AT and consumer electronics industries. In the AT industry, luxury brands often prefer self-collection of their own products, budget brands collect EOU garments from any brand using third-party collectors. In contrast, consumer electronics industry manufacturers typically collect their own brand's electronics, maintaining tighter oversight on the supply chain. Addressing these challenges requires policy interventions, such as the WEEE Directive in the EU to address the need to recycle, rather than landfill, consumer electronics and electronics devices. The research confirms that as of now, we do not know enough about AT CLSC's to suggest effective public policy changes that are specific to different product categories with different CE configurations. As such, this article shows that there is a pressing need and continued value in documenting and developing CLSC frameworks for other classes of products and industry categories. In consumer-facing CE systems, there is a growing body of empirical evidence regarding consumer perceptions of remanufactured products, with conflicting findings. For example, Guide and Li (2010) have shown that the sale price of new products in controlled auctions is not impacted by the presence of remanufactured product alternatives. In this special issue, Zheng et al. (2023) examine markets for consumer electronics where remanufactured products are introduced. They discuss how this impacts consumer purchase intention and the sales of brand-new products. They find that some remanufactured consumer electronics can decrease the market value for new versions, leading to cannibalization of their sales. To unpack this conflicting finding, the authors conduct experiments to emphasize the importance of distinguishing between markets with established and unestablished technology standards. They conclude that for products using established standards, refurbished products negatively affect sales due to cannibalization effects and high consumer quality expectations. Conversely, for products with unestablished standards, remanufactured products have a positive effect on sales by signaling an increased user base and the availability of complementary products. We concur with the authors' call for further research that considers behavioral mechanisms of network effects impacting consumer choice between remanufactured and new products, multiple brand and product generations, and the effect of competition. Moreover, further research could explore strategies to mitigate the adverse impact of remanufactured products on sales of brand-new products that use established technology standards. In line with the broader scope of CLSCs research, there is a need for more studies that explore the effect of remanufactured products in shaping consumer choice across various industries. In a detailed of consumer et al. (2023) conduct an to examine how to for items is impacted them about the remanufacturing process and their physical to remanufactured products. The authors find that consumers about remanufacturing processes does not the or for remanufactured consumer products. quality and with new products, consumer perception remanufactured Conversely, providing physical to remanufactured products in their the and for these The effect is across various products, from consumer electronics, such as to more items such as The that the increased and is real physical to products rather than or increased information This that consumers prefer over The research that the practice among of providing more information about the remanufacturing process might not be opportunities for to leverage and channels for the sales of remanufactured products. The authors that future research at different product the role of third-party remanufacturing, and the impact of more comprehensive strategies on consumer perception of remanufactured products. We identify several key research opportunities that are not in CLSC research but are for the successful implementation of CE. First, in analytical research that uses models for forward-looking studies on CE the focus should be on This empirical research and data to model and and, using model results to provide actionable managerial insights and policy Second, the role of IT and data obtained within CE requires careful For example, can improve in the quality of returned products, but in some industries or with consumer-facing products, comprehensive data product use might be further research. Third, our understanding of behavioral operations in a The behavioral problems of managers used products to as for OEM or third-party remanufacturing are not well there is a lack of research that the implementation to CLSCs with remanufactured products. are not profitable, how do we develop specific public policies that encourage their we have no research exploring the of and tools that enable the of We that the complex of CLSC rich with mechanisms and information and material calls for more empirical research grounded in industry data and realistic studies. These studies will provide key for advanced analytical models that leverage and behavioral data and models and a of information from the industry to and back to the industry, we can enhance managerial and design policies that and support the potential of CE in and the and use of materials. A circular economy on CLSCs with remanufacturing can provide substantial and environmental but its potential requires more contextual research that studies and new practical solutions and We aim to inspire future work that will address these challenges in order to help CE systems their We want to the in of de this special and and for and