New technologies can learn from mature markets

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the March-April 2016 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

March-April 2016

When I visit my millennial-aged daughter in Chicago, I’m amazed at the number of packages dropped off by UPS, FedEx and the USPS at her three-unit building on a daily basis. It’s as if she and her neighbors are single-handedly keeping Amazon in business. All those drop-offs got me to wondering: Does any of this make sense if you think about a carbon footprint? Rather than deliver millions of packages to one address at a time every day, wouldn’t it be more sustainable if we all just drove to the mall to do our shopping? After all, doesn’t research indicate that a signi cant percentage of consumers, especially millennial consumers like my…

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What do Class 8 trucks and cell phones have in common? Their end-of-life (EOL) strategies are shaped in large part by each product’s characteristics as well as current market conditions. 

These factors have long been part of the reverse channel, but how relevant are they in the booming market for wearable technology devices, or wearables? Market analyst IDC estimates that 91 million wearable devices were shipped in the third quarter of 2015—an increase of almost 200% over the same period a year ago. The industry needs effective EOL strategies as it grows rapidly, and governments tighten regulations covering the handling of used electronic products.

Research underway at the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics suggests that companies producing wearables should learn from established markets if they want to develop innovative ways to recover the value of used parts and products.

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