Management of tire waste is an important aspect of sustainable development due to its environmental, economical and social impacts. Key aspects of Reverse Logistics (RL) and Green Logistics (GL), such as recycling, re-manufacturing and reusable packaging, can improve the management of tire waste and support sustainability. Although these processes have been performed with a high degree of efficiency in other countries such as Japan, Spain and Germany, the application in Mexico and Russia has faced setbacks due to the absence of guidelines regarding legislation, RL processes, and social responsibility. Within this context, the present work aims to develop an integrated RL model to improve on these processes by considering the RL models from Russia and Mexico. For this, a review focused on RL in Mexico, Russia, Japan and the European Union (EU) was performed. Hence, the integrated model considers regulations and policies performed in each country to assign responsibilities regarding RL processes for the management of tire waste. As discussed, the implementation of efficient RL processes for the management of tire waste depends of different social entities such as the user (customer), private and public companies, and manufacturing and state-of-the-art approaches to transform waste into different products (diversification) to consider the RL scheme as a total economic system.

Mexico is located within the so-called Fire Belt which makes it susceptible to earthquakes. In fact, two-thirds of the Mexican territory have a significant seismic risk. On the other hand, the country’s location in the tropical zone makes it susceptible to hurricanes which are generated in both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Due to these situations, each year many communities are affected by diverse natural disasters in Mexico and efficient logistic systems are required to provide prompt support. This work is aimed at providing an efficient metaheuristic to determine the most appropriate location for support centers in the State of Veracruz, which is one of the most affected regions in Mexico. The metaheuristic is based on the K-Means Clustering (KMC) algorithm which is extended to integrate (a) the associated capacity restrictions of the support centers, (b) a micro Genetic Algorithm μGA to estimate a search interval for the most suitable number of support centers, (c) variable number of assigned elements to centers in order to add flexibility to the assignation task, and (d) random-based decision model to further improve the final assignments. These extensions on the KMC algorithm led to the GRASP-Capacitated K-Means Clustering (GRASP-CKMC) algorithm which was able to provide very suitable solutions for the establishment of 260 support centers for 3837 communities at risk in Veracruz, Mexico. Validation of the GRASP-CKMC algorithm was performed with well-known test instances and metaheuristics. The validation supported its suitability as alternative to standard metaheuristics such as Capacitated K-Means (CKM), Genetic Algorithms (GA), and Variable Neighborhood Search (VNS).

Objetivo: Estudiar el sistema de producción agrícola de traspatio con un enfoque logístico, asumiendo que el conocimiento de los eslabones que componen la cadena de suministro contribuirá a desarrollar estrategias productivas y operacionales que vinculen a los productores con cadenas agroalimentarias cortas. Diseño/metodología/aproximación: Se presenta el caso de estudio de las localidades de alta marginación y presencia indígena de los municipios de Chontla y Tempoal, Veracruz. Se analizó la cadena de productos agrícolas de traspatio a partir de un modelo genérico identificando los productos del caso de estudio y realizando una proyección económica anualizada. La información se recolectó con muestreo de oportunidad mediante encuestas a productores de traspatio, intermediarios, comercializadores minoristas y mayoristas, agentes municipales y autoridades locales. Resultados: La cadena de suministro de productos agrícolas de traspatio está definida por cinco eslabones: producción de materias primas, procesamiento, manufactura, presentación del producto y consumidor final; el esquema de comercialización es semiestructurado entre tradicional y de circuitos cortos. Se identificaron cuatro áreas de oportunidad: procesamiento no estandarizado, condiciones inapropiadas de almacenamiento, ausencia de registros y deficientes canales de distribución y comercialización. Limitaciones del estudio/implicaciones: La proyección económica indicó que 35.8 % de los productos se destina al autoconsumo, 21.2 % se comercializa en mercados locales y municipales y el 43 % de la producción no se comercializa. Hallazgos/conclusiones: Para disminuir la cantidad de producto no comercializado y fortalecer la economía local, se propone ubicar estratégicamente centros de acopio para vincular a los productores en cadenas agroalimentarias cortas.

Background: The Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP) is one of the most important transportation problems in logistics and supply chain management. The standard CVRP considers a fleet of vehicles with homogeneous capacity that depart from a warehouse, collect products from (or deliver products to) a set of customer locations (points) and return to the same warehouse. However, the operation of carrier companies and third-party transportation providers may follow a different network flow for collection and delivery. This may lead to non-optimal route planning through the use of the standard CVRP.Objective: To propose a model for carrier companies to obtain optimal route planning.Method: A Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem for Carriers (CVRPfC) model is used to consider the distribution scenario where a fleet of vehicles depart from a vehicle storage depot, collect products from a set of customer points and deliver them to a specific warehouse before returning to the vehicle storage depot. Validation of the model’s functionality was performed with adapted CVRP test problems from the Vehicle Routing Problem LIBrary. Following this, an assessment of the model’s economic impact was performed and validated with data from a real carrier (real instance) with the previously described distribution scenario.Results: The route planning obtained through the CVRPfC model accurately described the network flow of the real instance and significantly reduced its distribution costs.Conclusion: The CVRPfC model can thus improve the competitiveness of the carriers by providing better fares to their customers, reducing their distribution costs in the process.