Metamodeling of Deteriorating Reusable Articles in a Closed Loop Supply Chain

This paper presents a closed loop supply chain for a reusable, deteriorating tool. The tool is used in a manufacturing process on an item in a linear supply chain. A model is created for the linear item supply chain and the tools closed loop supply chain to analyse the interactions between them and various input parameters so that output responses of the system can be modelled. Three approaches are taken to model the system, a brute force factorial design, a modified version of a Latin hypercube space filling design, and a fast flexible space filling design. It is found that all three methods Design Expert, RLHC, and FFFD, accurately predict the response with the least amount of input. Space filling designs should be used if more factors are needed as they minimise the total amount of simulations needed to produce an accurate model.