roduct recovery management (PRM) encompasses the management of all used and discarded products, components, and materials that fail under the responsibility of a manufacturing company. The objective of product recovery management is to recover as much of the economic (and ecological) value as reasonably possible, thereby reducing the ultimate quantities of waste.The traditional approach of many manufacturers towards used products has been to ignore them. Manufacturers typically did not feel responsible for what happened with their products after customer use. Most products were designed in such a way that while materials, assembly, and distribution costs were minimized, the repair, reuse, and disposal requirements were not talcen into account. Manufacturers generally believed that the costs of incorporating these requirements would outweigh the benefits. Most of their customers were not prepared to pay an additional fee for a "green" product. Most purchasing decisions were made with the intention of minimizing the purchasing costs, instead of optimizing life-cycle performance-which includes maintenance, reuse, and disposal issues. Consequently, the majority of used products in "developed countries" were landfilled or incinerated, with considerable damage to the environment. Today, both customers and authorities demand that manufacturers reduce the quantities of waste generated by their products. Customer pressure is triggered by environmental concern in general and by rising product disposal costs

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Purpose-By constantly working in environments with high degree of uncertainty, humanitarian organizations end up becoming specialists in the implementation of agile systems. Their counterparts in profit-making organizations have a lot to learn from them in this domain. Volatility of demand, imbalance between supply and demand and disruptions are all factors that affect commercial supply chains and call for a high level of agility. The aims of this paper are twofold: first, to clearly define the concept of supply chain agility, and second, to build a model for assessing the level of agility of a supply chain. Design/methodology/approach-Three approaches are used in this research: literature review, case study and symbolic modeling. Findings-The paper developed first, a framework for defining supply chain agility and second, a model for assessing and improving the capabilities of humanitarian and commercial supply chains in terms of agility, based on an analysis of humanitarian approaches. Research limitations/implications-The model has been developed thanks to inputs from humanitarian practitioners and feedbacks from academics. The practical application to various humanitarian relief operations and commercial supply chains is yet to be done. Originality/value-This paper contributes significantly to clarifying the notion of supply chain agility. It also provides a consistent, robust and reproducible method of assessing supply chain agility, which seems appropriate for both humanitarian and business sectors. Finally, it is complementary to existant research on humanitarian logistics. It shows that though humanitarian professionals have a lot to learn from the private sector, the reverse is also true.

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This essay and the following commentaries address the use of theory in operations management. While much is said about theory in the typical journal article, theory, as science defines it, is not at the center of much of our research. The discipline had fallen into some bad habits. This essay and its commentaries appeal for more attention to what theory can mean for our understanding of operations management.