Stanford Case Study analyzing Cisco’s World Wide Reverse Logistics Program transforming its Reverse Supply Chain function to a $100M profit center from an $8M cost center.

1. Graduate student Sundaresan Chandrasekaran prepared this case under the guidance of Professor Dariush Rafinejad in collaboration with the
Reverse Logistics team at Cisco and Professor Dwight Collins of Presidio School of Management. Professor Robert Carlson and Assistant
Professor Feryal Erhun reviewed this case. Stanford Engineering cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion. Cases are not
intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management.
October 16, 2009
Turning End of Life Product Reprocessing into a Profit Center at
Cisco Systems, Inc. (B)
In December 2008, three years after the World Wide Reverse Logistics (WWRL) program was
started at Cisco, the company won the coveted Supply Chain Innovation Award. Cisco faced tough
competition from other finalists like Lockheed Martin, the U.S. Air Force, GENCO Supply Chain Solutions
to name a few. The annual Supply Chain Innovation Award was established by CSCMP’s (Council of
Supply Chain Management Professionals) Research Strategies Committee (RSC) and GLSCS (Global
Logistics & Supply Chain Strategies) magazine to recognize the best and most innovative solutions and
ideas in the supply chain profession. Supply Chain Brain reported on their website that Cisco Systems
earned the top spot by transforming its reverse logistics operation from a non-value-adding, $8 million
cost center to a profit-generating program that enhances the satisfaction of both internal and external
customers. In early 2005, what started as a study to identify areas of process improvement within Cisco,
over a three year period went from the Discovery Stage of identifying Reverse Logistics function as a
potential area to focus, to Planning Stage where the “100-Day” plan was put in place, to a successful
Pilot Stage where the Idea was proved. The Pilot Stage was phase III of the WWRL program1
. The WWRL
team, after its Pilot Stage success, faced the challenge of developing a strategy to expand the program
globally and scale operations to reach the estimated potential of $100 Million in net profit contribution.
Today the WWRL team has been rechristened as Customer Operations.
Reverse Logistics Program Business Objectives
In 2005 there was a growing concern within Cisco that many of its equipments might be ending
up in unofficial secondary markets. But with the success of the pilot stage of WWRL program, Dan
Gilbert, Vice President of WWRL and his team were promising Cisco an effective solution to this problem
by recovering products from customers and distributors (see Exhibit 1 for a comparison of challenges in
implementing closed loop supply chains across industries). The RL team came up with three main
business objectives for the WWRL program:
1. Transforming the reverse logistics function from a cost center into a thriving business generating
$100 million in profits and net contribution to the company within 3 years by:
a. Driving top line growth
1
Part Aof this case details Phase I (Discovery Stage), Phase II (Planning Stage) and Phase III (Pilot Stage) ofthe WWRL Program
at Cisco.
Department of
Management Science and Engineering
MS&E-002-2009
STANFORD SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

2. 2
b. Simultaneously reducing the operating costs of the reverse logistics function.
2. Reducing Cisco’s environmental Impact in line with the board mandate to become a “green”
company.
3. Brand Protection by preventing products from going to secondary markets.
Creating the new systems and processes would guarantee better control and visibility to Cisco
and thereby help alleviate the customer pain points with respect to the returns process. In the fourth
quarter of 2005, the RL team received consent from Cisco’s management to proceed with worldwide
implementation but with partial funding. Still, with careful project management and scope prioritization,
the budget allowed the RL team to complete a full global rollout. When asked about the key to this
success, Christine Fisher, Director of Process and Policies unit remarked “I do not know if the project
would have been funded if it was just another buck to be made. The combination of financial and
strategic value in creating a great program for the environment while improving customer satisfaction
was something that created the magic”.
Background – Selecting World Class Suppliers
Around the same time that the pilot stage was completed, the Reverse Logistics (RL) team
embarked on a rigorous strategic sourcing and vendor qualification process2
, first for Recycling and then
for Receiving and Operations. Suppliers were selected based on their capabilities, the services they
offered, and their ability to meet Cisco’s service levels as well as environmental and regulatory
compliance requirements. The cost competitiveness of every supplier’s proposal was also considered
and the pricing was negotiated through an online reverse auction.
For Recycling, four world class vendors were selected. (See Exhibit 2 for the various
stakeholders involved in the Reverse Logistics Program and refer to Exhibit 6 for returns material flow
between the different groups). On the Product Receiving and Operations side, TPL Logistics Inc. was
selected as the preferred supplier. TPL Logistics provides global end-to-end process and system for
inbound logistics3
, receiving and disposition4
, and fulfillment5
(see “Operations” section in Exhibit 2).
Originally, Cisco had its collection warehouse located in Ohio, so the new contract offered not only
better price and service but also greater global coverage. (Exhibit 3 shows which stages in a product’s
end-of-life (EOL) are handled by Cisco after the Reverse Logistics program was implemented). Moreover
the whole process is replicable, scalable and sustainable.
Phase IV – Operational Transformation6
With the selection of world class suppliers, the WWRL team now focused on determining the
activities that returned highest value. Driving product returns and achieving increased utilization of the
returned gear became a priority. The team was also quick in realizing the importance of incorporating
best practices of other internal organizations into its own processes.
2
This was part ofanother project called “Eclipse”
3
Inbound Logistics involves Carrier Management, Coordination tracking and support, Customer pickup etc.
4
Receiving and Disposition involves receiving into dock, receiving on inventory, de-configuration and then disposition
5
Fulfillment involves Order Management, Picking and Pack out and outbound logistics coordination
6
Part Aof this case details Phases I to III, Discovery Stage till Pilot Stage ofthe WWRL Program at Cisco.

3. 3
Product return streams
The World Wide Reverse logistics program receives its products primarily from three different
sources (see “Asset Recovery” section in Exhibit 2). Cisco’s customers in the telecommunications
industry, the various global service providers, and the IT industry form the first source. By means of its
Customer Trade-in Program, Cisco offers to take back used products from its customers and in return
provide them with discounts on new equipment purchases. These products are tagged as Defective
Goods Inventory (DGI). The next stream of product inflow was from missed shipments and refused
shipments. These returned products were typically unopened and had the original Cisco packaging.
They were tagged as Finished Goods Inventory (FGI). The third source of goods for the reverse logistics
program was the Excess and Obsolete (E&O) gear coming from Cisco’s manufacturing partners. This
again was happening because it was nearly impossible for them to forecast demand accurately.
Product re-use
The WWRL team had already identified the set of customers that would have the greatest need
for the recovered products (see “Value Recovery” section in Exhibit 2). The Service Supply Chain
organization was at the top of the list. The Refurbished Sales unit which was previously re-selling used
goods on a limited scale by re-furbishing and re-packaging was on the list by default. This unit also has a
separate marketing group to promote the sales of refurbished products. The cost of refurbishing is a
small percentage of the original unit cost of manufacturing and the refurbished products do not have
any manufacturing costs associated with them. Processes like re-packaging and boxing are accounted for
under overhead. (See Exhibit 4 for a sample list of Cisco Certified Refurbished Equipment). Customer
demonstration depots also joined the reverse logistics program’s clientele. Using the product returns for
their “try and buy” program was proving very cost efficient.
The harvest stage
Every product for which none of the internal departments could find any use, stopped at harvest
before going to recycle. Harvest was the stage where all such products were opened up and precious
metals and proprietary Cisco branded components would be extracted (see “Recycling” section in
Exhibit 2). The harvested commodity parts like memory, hard drives, power supply units etc. were
resold in the open market, whereas the proprietary Cisco parts were destroyed. So value was recovered
in every possible manner before the products (now dismantled in the harvest stage) were sent to
recycle.
Organizational change management
The reverse logistics team took a very rigorous and innovative approach in implementing the
program. The team’s philosophy was to run the reverse logistics function as a business with generating
bottom line profits as the driving force. In addition to the issue of minimal re-use another gap that
became evident was that the Reverse Logistics team was not recovering as much product as it
potentially could. In accordance with its philosophy two independent teams, Asset Recovery and Value
Recovery teams were put in place to close these gaps.
The Asset Recovery team was responsible for managing customer relations and tracking the
Return Material Authorizations (RMAs) to closure when TPL Logistics received the returned gear at its
facility. It managed the product returns arising from the Customer Trade-In Program, extended support
services to clients and handled Stock Rotation agreements with distributors. The “Manufacturing Excess

4. 4
and Obsolete” which is another source of product inflow is managed by one of the recycling vendors and
a majority of the products are offered through an internal website to the engineering labs. Dan also
came up with the idea of establishing asset recovery targets for this unit which resulted in dramatically
improving the RMA closure rate. Robert Anderson, Sr. Manager of the Operations team believes RMA
closures have become five times faster since the initiative was implemented. Also at times, in response
to an increased demand for a particular product, the asset recovery team proactively approaches Cisco’s
clients for returning those products so that the demand can be fulfilled. The effects of these changes
were seen as a 110% increase in tonnage of incoming product returns from 2005 to 20077
. The
increased volume of products coming back to Cisco meant that they were being diverted away from
other channels.
As the idea of reusing the recovered gear at such a huge scale was unheard of, an industry
standard core application was unavailable in the market to manage supply chain operations for the
Reverse Logistics program that would cater to the needs of the RL team. Hence, the operations unit
within WWRL created a tailor made solution using the spread sheet application to keep track of its
available supply and match its supply view with the demand view created by Value Recovery team to
effectively fulfill the product requirements of its customers.
The Value Recovery team was established with the goal of unlocking the value in the returned
gear and putting them to the best possible use. This team was entrusted with the responsibility to
maximize the value of product returns which would directly translate into bottom-line profits for Cisco.
They came up with a proprietary “Allocation Algorithm” to achieve this goal. The Business Intelligence
Manager, Ali Miyasaheb’s team which was involved in business analytics for Reverse Logistics program
helped operationalize the algorithm that Robert’s team manages today. The algorithm prioritizes the
various customers and decides allocations based on its logic. The internal customer delivering maximum
returns and greatest customer impact is given the highest priority. It also ensures that in an event of
supply falling short of demand, a percentage of the request raised by every department high up in the
priority list is served. So the products with limited availability and soaring demand do not get entirely
allocated to just one customer creating discontent in others. The algorithm also provides the RL team
with an option to modify the calculated priority to accommodate certain special cases.
Service Supply Chain was providing the maximum gains – virtual revenue – to WWRL program
and hence enjoyed the highest priority. The next preference was given to Refurbished Sales group
which refurbished and or repackaged the returned gear before reselling it in the open market. Such
refurbished or repackaged goods typically sold at 70% to 75% of the new product’s price. So those
companies which did not have the budget to buy Cisco’s brand new products now had an alternative
from Cisco itself at a cheaper price point which they could afford. The Service Supply Chain (SSC) and the
Refurbished Sales group are the two biggest customers for the reverse logistics team. The goods
received as part of Stock Rotation program from distributors are usually in highest demand as they are
new and box packed and hence can be put back into the market without any rework. Such products are
typically consumed entirely by SSC and Refurbished Sales group. Next in line are Cisco’s engineering labs
which include both technical support as well as training labs. These labs have a limited budget and
hence procuring used items from the reverse logistics team gives them a golden opportunity to cut their
costs whereby they could spend the saved money for equipments on their wish list.
7
CSCMP Innovation Award Whitepaper (April 2008)

5. 5
Learning fromother functions
The Asset Recovery and Value Recovery teams incorporated many practices that areat the heart
of marketing and sales organizations. Adopting from the sales department, linear and stretch targets
were set for product recovery as well as resale. Performance management was pivotal in driving to the
plan and stretch targets. With established quarterly goals and stretch targets that were tracked weekly
(see Exhibit 5), individual teams were held accountable for their respective re-use streams like SSC,
Refurbished Sales, and Network Academies etc. This went a long way in driving strategic value of re-use
for Cisco. Marketing techniques were espoused to publicize and promote the returned products and
there by expand the user base. Talking to the customers and helping them understand the advantage of
product re-use was instrumental in driving demand. The RL team intelligently segmented businesses,
identified the decision makers and then influenced “buy” decisions. The learning from the finance
department – tracking performance using virtual Profit and Loss (P&L) – was utilized in the full scale
implementation of the program as well.
By observing the Engineering department, the RL team learned to effect design changes that
would improve the product economics relative to recycling. Robert says, “We do from time to time bring
in design engineers to look at how we have to break products down to make it recyclable.” As a result,
when the Engineering Department designs a product, they keep in mind that at some point of time the
product will have to be recycled. And it is more cost effective and efficient to design it in a manner so
that when it gets to the recycling step it can be recycled properly and quickly. These changes do not
affect the performance of the product in any way but certainly alter the level of ease with which it can
be recycled.
A direct implication of this effort is that as the RL team continues to succeed over time with the
WWRL program as a profit center, it might transform Cisco Engineering’s design process to a point
where the designs of all products would be optimized from the outset to generate a continuing stream
of profits through some pre-designed number of end-of-life recovery steps.
Phase V – Building the Foundation for Change
Once the right partners were in place, and the operations were ready to scale, several hurdles
needed to be addressed internally within Cisco before the $100 million profit contribution target could
be achieved.
1. Scalable product allocations: In the pilot stage, most value recovery was driven by two
channels (Service Supply Chain and Refurbished Sales). To scale profitably, the Value Recovery team had
to expand to new customer channels while minimizing inventory held in the regional warehouses.
2. Building relationships and listening to the customer: In the pilot stage when volumes were
relatively small, stakeholders were tolerant of perceived risks from the RL program. But with volumes
projected to grow over 100% in 12 months, concerns such as service support costs and sales
cannibalization needed to be addressed proactively with stakeholders.
1) Scalable product allocations:
The Reverse Logistics team quickly realized that, with a constrained supply of returned product,
having a set of value recovery criteria was imperative to fairly and efficiently allocate product among the
various customer demand channels. Also, to make best use of warehouse space and inventory, they

6. 6
came up with certain measures that were used to decide which products could be held in inventory for
re-use and which ones needed to be sent directly to harvest. The deciding factors were many. Firstly,
the age of the product and the number of engineering revisions it had undergone was considered.
Secondly, it was seen how many years of service coverage remained within the lifecycle of the product.
Thirdly, the demand for the product was taken into account and it was a major determinant.
2) Building relationships and listening to the customer:
Rehman Mohammed, Director of Value Recovery team put it in an interview to Supply Chain
Brain that “you want to make sure that you bring the stakeholders along on the journey with you”. The
RL team did exactly this by addressing early on, the concerns that two of the groups: Service Supply
Chain (SSC) and Refurbished Sales had regarding the Reverse Logistics program. This ensured that the
resistance the RL team faced at the end of the day was minimized, and the organization was aligned to
drive toward a common goal.
Cisco’s Service Supply Chain (SSC) organization was a key stakeholder, being both a source of
product supply for WWRL through excess service parts inventory as well as WWRL’s largest customer
(see Exhibit 6 for returns material flow between different groups). This is the organization that supports
warranty claims and service contracts for Cisco’s customers. For this purpose they stock a wide range of
products from current to end-of-sale. SSC initially raised concerns that the flow of returned product back
into circulation would risk increasing downstream service costs. The RL team adopted a purely data and
analysis based approach to prove to them the inherent value in the program. First of all, the RL team
already had the value recovery criteria in place, which made sure that only those products would be
considered that were still being supported with at least 3 years remaining before End of Support. Also,
WWRL gave SSC access to a wider range and volume of products to support their operations at zero
cost, to reduce their expenses from new buys. This promised substantial cost savings for SSC. These key
points in support of the reverse logistics function were very well received by the SSC. In return, they
could send their surplus service inventory to WWRL. The RL team guaranteed that the surplus goods
coming from SSC would be utilized better as they would either be re-allocated to another unit or would
be sent to harvest. Thus the RL team shared a unique relationship with the Service Supply Chain
Organization as they were a supplier as well as a customer for the RL team. In 2008, on average about
10% of SSC’s service parts and materials came from theReverse Logistics program.
Addressing the issue of affecting newproduct sales
Another Stakeholder was the Refurbished Sales group. Traditionally, they had been procuring
and reselling SSC’s surplus inventory. Now the Reverse Logistics program gave them an opportunity to
widen their scope of operations and create larger customer impact as well as greater customer
satisfaction. At a superficial level, the expanded scope gave the impression of affecting the demand
among the external customers for virgin units of Cisco products becoming a major problem. But the RL
team analyzed the problem thoroughly, only to conclude there wasn’t any such threat at all. Mark West,
a Business Analyst involved with the WWRL program from its early stages, reasoned that through the
resale of refurbished goods, Cisco could now target the price sensitive customers. Earlier they had no
product offerings for such clients. He explained that it is similar to what happens with the rental cars in
the automotive industry. If these customers, like Cisco experience using the refurbished goods, then
they would be more willing to stretch their budgets’ for purchasing brand new Cisco equipment the next
time. So in actuality, this program was enabling sales.

7. 7
Understanding external customer’s pain points
Robert Anderson, Sr. Manager of Operations who has been with the RL program from the early
days of its inception cited three major problems their customers were facing at that time. Firstly, Cisco
did not have a global operations process in place to effectively recover products from its customers in
Asia or Europe. Hence the Return Material Authorizations (RMAs) created were not being addressed
properly. So when its customers called in to enquire if the products returned by them have been
received by Cisco or else when they expect to receive the products, Cisco did not have enough
transparency from its then vendor’s side to answer the queries effectively. Secondly, the processing of
credits to customers was delayed as they did not receive their credit for the returned goods until and
unless the respective RMAs were closed. Ali added that as part of the Customer Trade-in Program in
2005, Cisco’s customers were required to collect their old and used products from different field
locations which they operated and bring it to their central warehouse. From here, Cisco’s recycling
vendor would collect the gear. This was an added burden for Cisco’s customers.
Results – Evidence in Action
At the time when WWRL program was gaining momentum, Cisco started constructing a brand
new Technical Assistance Center (TAC) in New Delhi, India. The lab had a limited budget and was faced
with an aggressive timeline to commence its operations. When this TAC approached the Reverse
Logistics team, they supplied over $7 million worth of premium equipment to the lab within a short span
of time. This facilitated the lab’s initiative and enabled them in going live faster than they had
anticipated. This incident got a lot of positive press for the WWRL program. In Ali’s words “The
successful implementation in TAC became a poster child for the RL team to target many more labs.” This
world class lab stacked with premium Cisco equipment is able to provide better customer support as the
engineers can re-create customer issues and resolve them on the same equipment that customers use.
Today this lab is producing increasing numbers of Cisco Certified engineers. A serious benefit of this
success is that labs needing equipment now turn to the Reverse Logistics team first. Christine says, “We
present two major benefits upfront to any internal organization that approaches us. First, all our
products are free except for the shipping costs. Second benefit is that, their request gets serviced faster
here than it would if they go to manufacturing or external market.”
Value add to Cisco
All along the program, the reverse logistics team focused on minimizing operating costs as much
as it focused on driving demand and achieving top line growth. Bringing the whole process in-house and
selecting best in class vendors for recycling and managing the returns process provided Cisco complete
control and visibility of its products till their final disposition. Additionally, Cisco realizes actual revenue
from its recycling process in the order of multi-million dollars every year. The program improved overall
productivity and reduced operational expenses to 39% in 2008 from 119% in 2005, when expressed as a
percentage of the value of processed gear (see Exhibit 7). According to Christine, from the customer’s
perspective, the systems have improved significantly. Until now, throughout the life of the project, the
RL team has maintained a perfect rhythm to keep doubling its net contribution every year to reach the
$100 million dollar mark in FY’ 2008. The RL team also managed reporting requirements for Tax and
Customs department by providing them whatever data they requested.
Dan’s team embarked on this journey with a very clear vision of its objectives and has done well
to achieve them in full measure. Though the objectives did not change over the course of the project,

8. 8
the team did see certain benefits which they had not anticipated. The director of Process and Policies
group pointed out that there was more value at many different places internally within Cisco than they
had expected. Robert mentioned that, “As we went through re-engineering and redesigning our
processes and systems it helped us to ultimately understand them as never before.” Earlier Cisco had
outsourced the whole reverse logistics function as well as recycling to a sole vendor and in that case
they were vulnerable to the various environmental regulations and policies. But now, regulations like
the European Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive was part of Cisco’s
restructuring process. In fact, Cisco engaged a member of the WEEE team who had a part to play in the
implementation of the Reverse Logistics program in Europe.
Future Challenges
From 2005 to 2008, the RL team grew the program very efficiently and captured all the low
hanging fruit. One of the biggest challenges in front of them today is that the business has plateaued.
Some of the organizations that haven’t been tapped yet have very large business demands to stay
competitive. Trying to match these would increase costs for the WWRL team and hence their
operational efficiency would be affected.
FY08 and beyond8
For three years the WWRL team had functioned as a small team with just 50 members.
Implementing the program on a global scale and reaching a target of $100 million in net profit with no
major investment in IT infrastructure is a huge achievement by any standards. The Project has gone
from a manual pilot stage to a transformation stage to a stabilization stage now, wherethe foundation is
set. There is another project currently running under Dan, wherein Cisco is working with its distributors
for achieving better demand forecasting. When asked about this project affecting the supply stream for
WWRL, the managers of both Business Analytics team and Operations team agreed that their product
inflow may see a dip but considered the bigger picture that it would be beneficial for the company on
the whole. Robert added that, every year Cisco acquires new products and companies thereby new
products start coming back to the RL team which had never even existed on their radar a few months
ago. All of these products that require slightly different processes to support them quickly become a
part of the asset recovery world, operations world and value recovery world. Now that the foundation is
stabilized the RL team realizes that it constantly needs to createand build new capabilities.
The dip in product returns from distributors was no problem at all for them when they consider
other challenges, much bigger in nature that have to be addressed by the RL team. Now the team needs
to manage a highly fragmented customer base as the Value Recovery team taps into new internal users.
They need to do away with the original central planning process and bulk weekly shipments as the
demand list has grown from 3 to 82 different lists in 2008. This could only be fulfilled using small
sporadic shipments. Christine feels this scalability issue could partially be addressed by creating an
automated end to end system for order collection and processing. Also the system could be integrated
with the order collection system that exists for external customers currently. Increasing headcount is the
other part of the solution.
The reverse logistics program is experiencing a 20% increase in its Customer Trade-in Program
but the lack of capacity and coverage on a global scale is resulting in increased errors and discrepancies
8
Some of the information in this section is derived from Eclipse Phase 0, Execute Commit -Cisco internal company
presentation.

9. 9
and generating backlog. This transforms into slower credit processing for customers and ultimately into
reduced customer satisfaction levels. This problem needs to be addressed at the earliest. Also there
exists some level of friction between RL team and some of its internal customers with respect to the
Allocation Algorithm and its Disposition logic. To make the situation amiable, Ali and his team continues
to have dialogue with the various departments to make the Allocation Algorithm System more attractive
for them.
Currently the product flow happens in an “as is” condition until it gets allocated to the internal
customers. There is no screening process to identify and separate cosmetic issues from full repair
requirements. All the DGI goes through the same process. This capability gap is resulting in reduced
supply of products for re-use or resale, long lead times and higher repair costs. The other drivers for this
problem are global product routing rules which are not optimized and high freight costs with little
control or visibility on this side of the business. Creating solutions for these problems requires
convincing the management for millions in investment. Though the Reverse Logistics program by WWRL
has been stunningly successful, there are new challenges that need to be addressed innovatively and
effectively along the way as it grows.
A new beginning?
After 3 years into the implementation of the innovative Reverse Logistics program and achieving
strong net profit contributions, the team is considering the option of patenting the process. A senior
member commented saying; there have been serious talks from certain team members for filing
intellectual property (IP) for specific parts of the program as well. The reverse logistics program enables
Cisco to enhance the useful life of its products by up to 6 years and thereby extend their value manifold.
The WWRL team feels that what they have achieved stands as a practical example for other companies
seeking to unlock more value from their own products and parts, and obtain major reductions in
diversion rates to landfill.

10. 10
Exhibit 1 Comparison of Challenges in Implementing Closed Loop Supply Chains across Industries
Source: Guide, Daniel V.and Luk Van Wassenhove, Business Aspects of Closed Loop Supply Chains, June 2,2001.

11. 11
Exhibit 2 Reverse Logistics Program Stakeholders
Source: Compiled by case writer.
Recycling Vendor
locations
1. Netherlands
2. Fremont, CA
3. Roseville, CA
4. Singapore
TPL Logistics manages
product collections and
warehousecenters
Mostly managed by a Recycling
Vendor and majority of the
products are offered through
internal website to Labs.
Product flows in as is condition till it reaches the internal customers

12. 12
Recover
Value
Recover
Assets &
Reconcile
RMAs
Manage
Returned
Inventory
Receive
Returned
Product
Pickup
Returned
Product
Recycle
Create &
Manage
RMAs
Cisco Outsourced
High Value Low Value High Value High Risk
Cisco Outsourced
Exhibit 3 Product end-of-life (EOL) practice at Cisco, post Reverse Logistics program
Source: Cisco internal company presentation.

13. 13
Exhibit 6 Returns material flow between different groups
Exhibit 4 Sample product list of Cisco Certified Refurbished Equipment
Source: Cisco Company website.

14. 14
Exhibit 5 Learning from Sales (adopting quarterly quotas/stretch goals and tracking them weekly)
Source: Cisco’s Reverse Logistics: Using productreturns to drivesustainability and shareholder value, Company Presentation
VirtualRevenuefromre-useofproductreturns
Weeks: FY08

15. 15
Source: Company internal documentation.
Exhibit 6 Returns material flow between different groups

16. 16
Source: CSCMP Innovation Award Whitepaper (April 2008).
Exhibit 7 Productivity Gains (as a percentage of the value of processed gear)