Reverse logistics manages products moving back from their user or final destination for return, repair, replacement, resale, or recycling. The next destination may be a repair center or recovery facility rather than the original warehouse. DHL overview.
Returning a product is only the start
A returned item still needs a disposition: what happens to it next? DHL describes options including restocking, returning to the vendor, remarketing, and recycling. Receiving a parcel does not establish that its contents are suitable for resale. Returns and circularity.
An illustrative workflow
Consider a company accepting a returned environmental sensor. The following is an example process, not a description of a particular company's operations:
- Create a return record that identifies the item and the reported problem.
- Record receipt and distinguish the returned unit from available stock.
- Inspect it using the company's relevant checks and record the result.
- Decide whether to repair, restock, return to a supplier, or send it to an appropriate recovery route.
- Record the outcome and close the customer's return separately from the item's physical disposition.
Those last two events can occur at different times. A customer receiving a refund does not prove the product was repaired or recycled.
Measure the outcome
Useful example measures include time from receipt to decision, the share of received items actually returned to service, and the number still waiting for inspection. State the denominator and reporting period. “Eight units repaired out of ten inspected this week” says something different from “eight units repaired out of every return received this month.”
The practical question is what happened to the returned item, how that outcome was recorded, and whether it recovered value or required disposal.
Why keep the return reason?
Repeated reports of the same fault can give a product team a specific issue to investigate. Keep the report distinct from the diagnosis: a customer's description of a failure is valuable evidence, but inspection may identify a different cause.