A decision support system to evaluate the quality and warranty policies for remanufactured products

Purpose: This paper proposes optimisation models to evaluate and examine the selling of extended warranty policies in terms of improved profits in producing/marketing remanufactured products. These models are numerically solved using a quadratic programming solution approach and implemented in the decision support system (DSS). Design/methodology/approach: The purpose of this paper is to develop the optimisation models for a DSS and evaluate different warranty policies for buyers. Findings: This study has demonstrated the flexibility and usefulness of a model-driven DSS for the quality and warranty management, which is applied to examine and evaluate different configurations (i.e. component reuse, rebuild and recycle) for remanufactured products and propose the selling of extended warranty policies for buyers. Research limitations/implications: The developed model-driven DSS can assist manufacturers to select and increase the number of components, e.g. to be reused, rebuilt, and recycled for producing a remanufactured product and propose suitable warranty policies for buyers. However, this study focusses only on the evaluation of warranty policies for specific remanufactured products in a DSS, i.e. types of air compressors for production operations in manufacturing industry. Originality/value: This study developed optimisation models to be used in a DSS for proposing the selling of extended warranty of a remanufactured product to improve customer satisfaction and maximise the gained profits for manufacturers.