ABSTRACT
Acquisition of end-of-life (EOL) products in the right quantities and at the right time is an important goal in remanufacturing. Once the EOL products have been obtained, they can be disassembled into individual components and subassemblies in order to satisfy the different demands. Since EOL products are received in a variety of conditions and from a number of sources, the acquisition process involves a lot of uncertainties. Multiple suppliers offering a wide variety of EOL products, suppliers offering discount rates on the total purchase to increase their competitiveness, independent outside suppliers offering ready-to-use components, capacity limits on the number of components that can be carried into inventory from one period to the next, and stochastic component yields are examples of the uncertainties that may exist.
