Fuzzy approach for the selection of third party reverse logistics provider

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a structured model for evaluating and selecting the best third party reverse logistics provider (3PRLP) under fuzzy environment for the battery industry. Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, the multi‐criteria decision‐making tools such as analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) are adopted to solve the problem of selection of 3PRLP. Findings – In a real‐time situation, collecting the returned products from the customer end to the manufacturer end becomes more tedious, time consuming work and also it makes the information flow in the supply chain management more complex. A separate logistics system has to be developed in order to inspect and maintain the collected returned products in the down stream management. This current scenario encourages the top‐level management to seek for an alternative for collecting the returned products instead of making their supply chain structure to be complex. This gives rise to the term called 3PRLP. The 3PRLP will collect the returned products, inspect them and categorize them according to the various reverse logistics operations. A key finding of this work is a model to determine the best 3PRLP for the battery industry. Practical implication – This work provides a useful decision model for practicing managers and researchers within this area, and also shows the various relationships, and processes the information required for the management involved in the selection of a reverse logistics provider under fuzzy environment. Originality/value – In this research, seven attributes and 34 sub‐attributes are considered and an interpretation of reverse logistics attributes in terms of their pair‐wise comparisons has been carried out. Attributes possessing lower priorities in the AHP and FAHP need to be taken care on a selection of best 3PRLP.