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Browsing by Author "Rocha, Joana da Conceição Coelho"

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  • Improving the communications´ workflow in products´ return management of a Portuguese business-to-business small enterprise: MAIS Automação
    Publication . Rocha, Joana da Conceição Coelho; Babo, Rosalina Maria Gonçalves Ferreira Bessa; Almeida, Paula de Fátima Peres Teixeira
    The high number of products released in the market each year can lead to more returns of products, since the customers may experience a hard time in figuring out whether the purchased product is what they were looking for. Even though there has been an improvement in the products’ quality, the returns did not diminuish, on the contrary, the customers’ returns have increased throughout the years. In order for companies to manage this increase, they need to effectively manage the supply chain. Product returns can be considered as “reverse logistics”, because it involves logistics and the reverse flow of products. The products’ return can have various reasons and its process involves several activities such as product recovery and processing, return organisation and reverse logistics. The implementation of product return management can be seen as a business strategy and opportunity for the companies, increasing the customers’ satisfaction. Managing this information flow, as well as all the communication between the stakeholders, is very important and needs to be carefully handled. This study intends to understand the product return management in a B2B SME company, in particular at MAIS Automação. MAIS Automação is a Portuguese SME that commercialises electrical and automation products to industry customers. Thus, to answer the issues at hand, a qualitative method with semi-structured interviews was employed. The use of one cycle of a canonical action research methodology allowed to draw the main weakeness in the communication and workflow at the company. Consequently, to improve these, a list of guidelines and the prototype of a system to manage returns are presented.
    2021-07-22Master thesis Open access Show more