The North American lead-acid battery industry gains its environmental edge from its employment of closed-loop life cycle production. Nowadays, the typical new lead-acid battery contains 60 to 80 percent recycled lead and plastics. In this thesis, the closed-loop supply chain of a lead-acid battery manufacturing process has been investigated which extends the traditional supply chain to the entire product life cycle. A new tactical planning model has been developed for the entire closed-loop manufacturing process including purchasing, production, and end-of-life product return and recycling. The model is a multi-objective, multi-echelon mixed integer linear programming model, which minimizes the total costs and the total transportation pollution emissions, subject to structural and functional constraints. Decisions are made regarding material procurement, production, recycling and inventory levels, and the transportation modes between the echelons. Sensitivity analysis has been performed to evaluate the integration with third party outsourcing, changes in parameters and design options.* *This dissertation is a compound document (contains both a paper copy and a CD as part of the dissertation).Dept. of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses u26 Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2006 .Z435. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-01, page: 0440. Thesis (M.A.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2006.
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