Reverse Fulfilment
Definition: Some people were upset when a few years ago companies such as Ocado started substituting the word fulfilment for old-fashioned 'supply' or 'delivery'. They would probably be even more upset at the jargon that has surfaced more recently in connection with reverse fulfilment, the part of supply chain management, or SCM, that has to cope with product returns. With increased consumer empowerment, and in recessionary times, taking back unwanted, faulty or oversupplied goods is a major preoccupation. 'Taking back' doesn't sound important enough, so instead we have inward progress, integrated product lifecycles, closed -loop supply-chain management solutions and properly aligned optimised reverse logistics engineered solution analysis.
Reverse fulfilment covers returns processing, disposal, refurbishment, recycling, repurposing, recapturing value and reverse shopping, a fancy term for putting things back on the shelves after they have been abandoned at checkout (but can also mean an online Dutch auction whereby consumers tell suppliers how much they are prepared to pay).
Send buzzawords, jargon and new and exotic usages to tony.thorne@kcl.ac.uk
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