Production waste recovery has economic and environmental benefits but carbon quotas limit it. To avoid future high-cost recovery technologies, we present an example of Starkelberg model between a recycler and a manufacturer, focusing on recycling exhaust gases containing metal elements from production waste. From the perspective of a recycler, this paper outlines the process of waste recycling, processing, and sales, highlighting how the proportion of recovered waste gas directly or indirectly affects sales volume. The study shows that the impact of different factors on sales volume is bifurcated, with transaction factors affecting both ordinary and new products negatively, while technical aspects positively impact new products. Surprisingly, manufacturers and recyclers benefit, even if the reasons for selling ordinary and new products are different. In the end, the products of ordinary and new in the market are mutual constraints and mutual influence.

Safety accidents are a major hazard to the community and impact sustainable development. Production safety, as the basic corporate social responsibility (CSR), is mostly overlooked by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China. The traditional safety management model of SMEs has some loopholes. Therefore, it is critical to explore other non-traditional and effective approaches. With the rapid development of the internet and the wide use of social media, the influence of public opinion on the production safety of SMEs has now become more and more powerful. However, the influence mechanism hasn’t been fully studied and understood. Based on grounded theory, this paper conducted an in-depth study on how SME behavior in production safety is influenced by public opinion. The study found that public opinion influences SME production safety through three channels: public awareness, media response, and government guidance. Public opinion influences the production safety of SMEs through intermediaries such as government supervision, the willingness of SMEs to produce safely, the behavior of employees to participate in safety management, and the self-disciplinary behavior of the industry. The impact of the willingness of SMEs to produce safely is affected by the resource guarantee ability of SMEs, therefore, the limited public opinion resources should be combined with the reality of SMEs through information exchange to promote the optimum game relationship between bodies, in order to make up for the lack of production safety resources capacity of SMEs. The conclusion of this study is crucial in understanding how to improve the production safety of SMEs by the means of public opinion to promote SMEs to engage in sustainability practices and reduce the occurrence of safety problems.

Although many studies have recently investigated how the product quality impacts on economic and environment performance under remanufacturing, all of them assume that remanufacturing operations are undertaken by the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) or independent remanufacturers (IRs). However, many OEMs such as Lexmark, Canon, and Epson filed lawsuits with those IRs without licensing, but outsourced the remanufacturing operations to several contracted remanufacturers (CRs). We therefore extend the prior research to investigate the economic and environmental implications of OEMs' strategic desired quality level choices under remanufacturing outsourcing. That is, we develop two models corresponding to two scenarios where OEMs (1) undertake remanufacturing in-house or (2) outsource it to a CR. Our results show that, to create a less intense cannibalization problem for new products sales, OEMs would be likely to choose a lower product quality when outsourcing remanufacturing to a CR. More importantly, from the economic perspective, we find that outsourcing remanufacturing to a CR hurts the OEM and the industry. However, from the environmental angle, our results reveal that there is a ratio threshold for environmental impact for different life cycle phases, above which remanufacturing in-house is definitely beneficial for OEM in economics and environment, but for the rest, outsourcing is equally or more environmental-friendly, despite cutting down the profit.

In the last decades, many brand name OEMs, including IBM and Benz, have started embracing remanufacturing operations through collaborating with the independent third-party remanufacturers. Based on observations from current practice, we formulate two theoretical models for an OEM who produces new products itself but with two possible options for remanufacturing: 1) forgoing remanufacturing operations and all unmet demand of remanufactured products are satisfied by third-party remanufacturers or 2) entering into remanufacturing operations under a collaboration with the third-party remanufacturers. Our results reveal that the OEMs began to embrace remanufacturing mainly because they want to protect the new product and reduce the cannibalization effect by limiting the secondary market. In particular, we find that, compared with forgoing remanufacturing operations, collaboration with the third-party remanufacturers is always beneficial for the OEM but may be detrimental to the third-party remanufacturer and our environment. To limit the perverse incentives of the OEM, a revenue sharing contract, in which both parties can reach the Pareto gains, has been developed for both parties. We also find the non-collaboration will be more friendly to the environment.

A simple approach for preparing recycled poly(ethylene terephthalate) (r-PET) with excellent processability and melt strength has been developed in this research. To increase the intrinsic viscosity of r-PET, a two-step chain extension process using a combination of SAG-008 and tetraglycidyl-4,4′-diaminodiphenylmethane (TGDDM) was investigated. To evaluate the chain extension degree of the modified r-PET, its intrinsic viscosity (IV) and rheological properties were characterized, and found to be correlated to the long-chain branches and molecular weight. The results indicated that the combination of SAG-008 and TGDDM at the optimized conditions provided the highest IV of 1.18 dl/g while controlling the gel formation to a low value. The increases in storage modulus, loss modulus and complex viscosity revealed the enhancement of melt strength and viscoelasticity of r-PET. The differential scanning calorimetry results showed that the crystallinity was reduced with the addition of chain extenders. On the other hand, stepwise annealing method from room temperature to crystal melting temperature promoted the crystallization, which was confirmed by wide-angle X-ray diffraction measurement.

This paper adds to the growing remanufacturing literature by investigating a collaborative model in which the manufacturer serves as the remanufacturer's distributor while selling its own product. The paper extends the collaborative model that we have studied previously by characterizing it as a channel power structure under which the manufacturer plays the leader role in the collaboration. Furthermore, the paper compares this collaborative model with a competitive model in which the manufacturer competes with the remanufacturer in the market on pricing, sales volume and profit and finds that even if the manufacturer chooses to collaborate with the remanufacturer, it does not give up its market position; the manufacturer keeps the price of its product unchanged as the remanufactured product becomes increasingly acceptable to the consumer, and its product's sales volume remains unchanged in both models. Finally, this paper observes that the collaborative model benefits the manufacturer more than the competitive model, whereas the competitive model benefits the remanufacturer more than the collaborative model. Obviously, if collaboration benefits both of the manufacturer and remanufacturer, they will choose to collaborate, and the manufacturer will transfer part of its profit to the remanufacturer, but if competition brings them more profit, they will choose to compete in the market, and the remanufacturer will transfer part of its profit to the manufacturer.

ABSTRACTReactive high vinyl silicone oil (HVSO) was selected to prepare the ceramic silicone rubber composites. The effects of HVSO on the mechanical properties and thermal stabilities of ceramic silicone rubber composites were investigated. The structures of the cross‐linked network of silicone rubber with or without HVSO were studied. The intermolecular space of silicone rubber was enlarged, and the cross‐linked point was concentrated by addition of HVSO, which was demonstrated by cross‐linking densities, scanning electron microscope (SEM) images, and dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA). The cross‐linked network model was formed with the slipping of the cross‐linked points along with the silicone rubber chain. Mechanical properties of composites were enhanced by the formation of this cross‐linked network. The tear strength, tensile strength, and elongation at break of the composites were increased by 18.5%, 13.2%, and 37.4% by the adding of 2 phr HVSO, respectively. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015, 132, 41864.

On the consideration of recycling,this paper initially demonstrates the collaborative model that a manufacturer distributes the product which comes from a remanufacturer.Firstly,we get the optimal price decisions of the remanufacturer and the manufacturer.Secondly,we get the optimal price decisions in the competitive model.Finally,through numerical simulation,we compare the two models from the perspective of the equilibrium price,sale volume,return rate of used products and the profit,and get the precondition that the firm chooses the collaborative model.

从零售商的角度,研究了市场上存在再制造商生产再制造产品时,零售商是否应在新产品营销渠道上销售再制造产品。运用Stackberg博弈分别求得销售再制造产品和不销售再制造产品下的最优定价策略,并对两种销售策略进行比较分析。通过数值仿真,分析了消费者对再制造产品的接受度对零售商两种销售策略下的销售价格、销售数量和盈利的影响。

This paper firstly studies the model where the distributor engages in remanufacturing (D-model), and compares it with no-remanufacturing model and the model where the manufacturer engages in remanufacturing (M-model), respectively, from the equilibrium outcomes for new and remanufactured product prices, sale volume and the profit of the manufacturer and the distributor.

The demand for remanufactured products is growing.The original equipment manufacturer(OEM) often does not adopt the remanufacturing option in consideration of remanufacturing cost or other factors.OEM would face the competition from the remanufacturers because they are attracted by re-manufacturing margins.Different from other studies,this paper investigates the case that manufacturers play the distributor role for remanufacturers from a collaboration standpoint. This research considers a single-period collaboration model.In this model,remanufacturers supply remanufactured products for manufacturers.Manufacturers are responsible for marketing and sales of remanufactured products.The model assumes that remanufacturers have sufficient channel power over manufacturers to act as a Stackelberg leader.The model also assumes that producing a remanufactured product is less costly than manufacturing a new product.We further assume that manufacturers will adopt the price discrimination strategy because consumers can distinguish remanufactured products from new products. In the first part,this research studies the collaborative research model and provides its equilibrium outcomes.We compare the collaborative model with the non-remanufacturing model.The comparison shows that the collaborative model has lower sales volume and profit than the non-remanufacturing model for new products.In contrast,the collaborative model has higher total sales volume and profit than the non-remanufacturing model.In the second part,this research compares the collaborative model with the competitive model,and shows that the collaborative model has higher new product price,but lower re-manufactured product sales volume than the competitive model.In the third part,this research uses numerical simulation to demonstrate that the collaborative model is advantageous to manufacturers,but the competitive model is advantageous to remanufacturers.Remanufacturers are willing to collaborate with manufacturers by receiving some profits from manufacturers. In summary,this study first investigates the model where a remanufacturer collaborates with a manufacturer in the same channel and considers that the collaborative model has rooms for further improvement.Future research can discuss research models in two-period,multi-period and infinite planning horizons situations,or consider remanufacturers as the Stackelberg leader.

The model where the remanufacturer and the manufacturer collaborate with each other in the same channel has been studied before, while this paper firstly investigates it under three channel power structures. This paper investigates a single-period deterministic model which keeps the analysis simple so as to obtain sharper insights. The results characterize the optimal remanufacturing and pricing strategies for the remanufacturer and the manufacturer in the collaborative model under the three channel structures, and find that in each case, because the total market profit in the collaborative model is higher than the competitive model, the collaborative model will be built as soon as the remanufacturer's profit is ensured. Besides, this paper compares the pricing strategies of the collaborative model between the channel structures.