Department of Logistics

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Browsing Department of Logistics by Author "Adriaanse, Frederik Gideon"

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    The design and testing of a decision support tool for the evaluation of the reusability of glass wine bottles : a South African case study
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2018-03) Adriaanse, Frederik Gideon; Kussing, Ulrike Inge; Van Eeden, Joubert; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Dept. of Logistics. Logistics.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY : Sustainable business is becoming increasingly important to governments and society. The South African wine industry has a good reputation as far as its contribution to sustainable business is concerned. However, this contribution is mainly represented by the production of the wine and not necessarily the post-production side. Reusing glass wine bottles is an initiative that can contribute to the wine industry’s reputation on the post-production side of sustainable business. Reusing glass wine bottles that are currently not being reused requires expensive infrastructure to viably accommodate the recovery and reusing activities. This poses large financial risks to companies that wish to reuse their glass wine bottles. Companies have to evaluate whether their glass wine bottles are viably reusable before such an initiative can be implemented in practice. This requires many factors to be taken into consideration. This research was dedicated to developing and testing a user-friendly decision support tool to evaluate the viability of reusing glass wine bottles. The tool provides clarity on the main research objective from a business logistics perspective by taking various parameters into consideration, such as a company’s environmental setting, current sales volume and the type of market the wine bottle is serving. Even though more perspectives, such as a cost-benefit analysis and an environmental sustainability analysis also have to be done, this decision support tool represents the first of the various tests a glass wine bottle should undergo before further investigation is done. Due to the exploratory nature of this research, a case study design was followed. The case company of this research provided an ideal setting to test the decision support tool since they already have the required infrastructure in place to reuse several of their glass wine bottles. The decision support tool of this research was developed and tested based on their business environment and the available data on their reusable and non-reusable glass wine bottles. The decision support tool was tested on one of the company’s non-reusable wine bottles to provide an outcome to decision makers on its level of reusability. The tool concluded that the wine bottle is viably reusable from a business logistics perspective, although it also indicated which parameters would have to improve to increase its level of reusability. The company’s decision makers evaluated the results to increase the overall validity and reliability of the research. The decision support tool’s framework can also be used by the broader wine industry if companies want to evaluate whether their wine bottles are showing signs of viable reusability.