# E-Waste Reverse Supply Chain: A Review and Future Perspectives
## 3 Reverse Supply Chain
### Differences between Forward and Reverse Supply Chains  
A reverse supply chain differs significantly from a forward supply chain in a wide range of aspects [26; 34]. Table 2 shows a summary of these main differences. Reducing cost and increasing profit are considered as two vital goals in forward supply chains, while reverse supply chains focus on environmental regulations, cost minimization as well as profit maximization. In forward supply chains, the demand for a product can be forecasted by using conventional forecasting techniques. However, these techniques might not be applied directly in reverse supply chains due to the high level of uncertainty regarding returned products [29; 35]. In addition, a new product, in forward supply chains, is produced in a manufacturing facility that is transferred to many distributors. In RSC operations, product returns are collected from many resources, such as consumers, collection centres, etc., which are delivered to one treatment facility, such as recycling, remanufacturing or disposal facilities. In other words, the shipping flows in the former are one-to-many, whereas the shipping flows in the latter are normally many-to-one. New products are generally packaged carefully to prevent damage during transportation processes and ensure ease of treatment and identification. On the other hand, product returns do not have \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{p{142.3 pt} p{142.3 pt}} \hline \hline
**Forward Supply Chain** & **Reverse Supply Chain** \\ \hline Focus on increasing profit and cost minimization & Focus on environmental issues, regulations, profit and cost minimization \\ \hline Product demand is quite straightforward to forecast & Returned products are relatively difficult to estimate \\ \hline The quantity of product is less variation & The quantity of returned products are highly uncertain \\ \hline Conventional marketing techniques can be used & There are some elements requiring complicated marketing \\ \hline Processing times and stages are well identified & Processing times and stages are vary based on the quality of returned products \\ \hline Products are delivered from one location to other locations & Used products are collected from a lot of locations and then reach to one processing centre \\ \hline Speed is one of the main factors in terms of competitive advantage & Speed is not an important element \\ \hline Product packaging is standard & Returned product packaging highly varies or lack of packaging \\ \hline Product structure is standard & Returned product structure is modified \\ \hline Cost estimation is quite easier because of accounting systems & Cost factors are complicated to determine \\ \hline Disposition options are rather clear & Disposition alternatives depended on the condition of a returned product \\ \hline Inventory management is consistent & Inventory management is chaotic \\ \hline Cost implications are quite clear & Cost implications are unclear \\ \hline Processes for real-time product tracking are highly visible & Processes for returned product tracking are less visible because of lack of information system infrastructure \\ \hline Product life cycle changes are easily managed & Product life cycle changes are difficultly managed \\ \hline Models are relatively deterministic & Models are more stochastic \\ \hline Key importance to manufacturers & Key importance to end-of-life processors (such as remainufacturers, recyclers) \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: Differences between forward and reverse supply chains. complete packaging, which can lead to some important issues in shipping, treatment and identification. Another aspect of the difference is the delivery speed. If a customer cannot receive a new product on time from a company, the customer can change to the competitors of the company. This is a reason why forward supply chains should offer fast delivery to prevent stock-outs. In RSC, returned products can be collected from the company itself.