Competition and cooperation game strategy between manufacturers and remanufacturers considering design for remanufacturing

To explore the competition and cooperation strategy between manufacturer and remanufacturer in Closed-Loop Supply Chain (CLSC) under the background of Design for Remanufacturing (DfRem), the two-period game models of competition model with patent protection, competition model without patent protection and cooperation model for manufacturers and remanufacturers were established. The research showed that remanufacturers would choose cooperation only when they had owned patent rights, otherwise they choosed competition. Manufacturers tended to cooperate all the time, and they did not claim patent protection to resist the remanufacturer but used the patent rights to force the remanufacturers to cooperate with them when they own the patent rights. In cooperation mode, manufacturers would actively DfRem, and then the level of DfRem and manufacturers' profit reached the highest, and the remanufacturers' profit was higher than that in competition model with patent protection. The total profit of the CLSC was the lowest in the competition model without patent protection, and the highest in the cooperation model. It was necessary to avoid the vicious competition without patent protection, and promoted the cooperation to ensure the stable development of the supply chain system. © 2022 CIMS. All rights reserved.