At the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics
Authors:
Pedro Gutierrez, WaiPing Lee
Zaragoza Supply Chain Management Program (ZLC)
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Summary:
This thesis focuses on management of returnable transport items (RTIs) for a food and beverage 3PL provider by enhancing visibility and optimizing processes. It introduces a centralized database and dashboard to reduce inefficiencies, costs, and environmental impact. Using research and technology, it delivers aactionable solutions for greater efficiency and sustainability.
Would like to talk more about this!
Root cause for returns can be very challenging. It’s not uncommon in retail for circa 90% of returns to have no issues with them at all, due to buyer’s remorse, etc. Getting perfectly sealed product back isn’t uncommon at all.
We’ve found we can get more power from linking the return to the interaction with our customer care team(s). That can get into whether troubleshooting can be improved or whether the expectations of the customer simply were not met. From a true Quality. perspective nothing was necessarily wrong. But the return still happened, so we’d always want to get further insight.
Thank you for sharing, John. You’re absolutely right that understanding the root cause of returns, especially when the product itself isn’t faulty, can be incredibly complex. Buyer’s remorse and unmet expectations often point to factors outside of traditional quality assessments.
Our project, specifically focused on the return of RTIs (Returnable Transport Items), faces similar challenges. While it’s not about consumer products, the reasons behind RTI returns—or failures in the return process—can often be tied to communication issues, logistical coordination, or even a lack of clarity in expectations among the stakeholders involved.
We’d love to dive deeper into this with you—particularly on how your team captures and analyzes those customer care insights.
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