The increased number of items with a shorter useful life, the massive use of e-commerce, and increased environmental awareness with increasingly demanding laws on disposal of products, have created a large amount of returns increasing the importance of Reverse Logistics for society and companies, in general. However, according to the literature, Reverse Logistics is still a poorly explored activity, and therefore there are no concrete data to work with and to explore opportunities for improvement. With the goal of bridging this gap, a literature review on the relationship between Reverse Logistics and business performance was conducted in addition to a study carried out in the companies to investigate how this relationship is established. As the main result, which is directly related to the objectives of this study, a conceptual model that contributes to a better understanding of the reverse logistic process was developed. This model includes performance indicators suitable for evaluating the activity. Another objective of this study is the use of the multiple-criteria decision making approach, a tool that simplifies the selection of indicators according the company strategies.
Reverse Logistics; Performance Indicators; Conceptual Model; Multiple-Criteria Decision Making
