Duration: 23:54
🧾 Analytical Summary
🚀 The Reverse Logistics Journey Begins
John Lee brings 15 years of logistics experience specializing in returns and repair processes to his role at Odoo, where he's dedicated to ensuring the platform fully supports these critical operations. His presentation opens with a relatable scenario: you've ordered an electric scooter for your nephew's birthday. Delivery arrives—excitement peaks—but the box is damaged and the scooter broken. The company provides excellent customer service: free replacement and a return label. Problem solved for you, but for the company, the journey is just beginning. This journey is reverse logistics.
Reverse logistics encompasses the entire process of returning goods from customers back to the company and all associated processes—what John calls "the three Rs": Return, Repair, and Recycle.
🎯 Why Reverse Logistics Matters
Customer Satisfaction: 10-15 years ago, return processes were universally terrible. But with the explosion of online shopping, return volumes skyrocketed, forcing companies to adapt. Today, customer expectations are high—returns must be fast, simple, and free. Good return processes are essential for customer satisfaction.
Money: It took time, but companies realized that returning and reusing defective goods saves millions. Moreover, repairing and selling refurbished products creates new markets and generates additional profit.
Impact: With growing focus on circular economy, mindsets and regulations are changing. Reverse logistics isn't just about customers and money—it's about reducing resource consumption and avoiding waste, creating genuine environmental impact.
The combination of these three factors makes reverse logistics not just important, but essential for modern businesses.
⚠️ The Challenges: Why Implementation Is Complex
Unpredictability: You don't know what customers will return, when they'll return it, or in what condition it will arrive. Every case is unique—one broken scooter differs from another—requiring processes that handle all possible scenarios.
Traceability: Defective, refurbished, and new goods cannot be mixed. Everything must be properly labeled and separated in warehouses. Accidentally shipping a defective scooter when a customer ordered new is catastrophic. You must track warranties, ownership, and repair status—requiring robust traceability.
Quality: If you're returning goods to stock or selling repaired items, they must meet quality standards. Quality and reverse logistics are inseparable.
🔄 The Loop: A Complete Seven-Step Flow
John demonstrates implementing a complete reverse logistics flow in Odoo—what he calls "the loop" because it's a full cycle:
- Collect customer request via Help Desk
- Return the goods from the customer
- Inspect upon arrival in stock
- Repair in-house
- Inspect again post-repair
- Put back in stock as refurbished
- Sell to another customer
This closed-loop exemplifies true circular economy principles.
⚙️ Configuration: Surprisingly Simple
In a bold move, John configures the entire flow live on stage to demonstrate its simplicity. Required settings (only two):
Lots (already activated): Track products by lot/serial numbers.
Storage Locations: Enable multi-location management.
Locations Created (three):
- Repair Location (under WH, not WH/Stock): Stores defective goods; visible but not available for sale.
- Scrap Location (under WH): For goods not worth repairing before disposal.
- Refurbished Location: Stores repaired goods before resale.
Operations Created:
- Returns Operation: Custom operation with RMA sequence (Return Material Authorization). Every return generates a unique RMA number provided to customers for return permission. Critically, opposite operations must be configured bidirectionally—returns are opposite of deliveries, and vice versa.
- Repair Operation: Configured to grab defective goods from the repair zone and place repaired goods in the refurbished zone.
Quality Points Created (two):
Return Inspection: Applied to return operations, inspecting on quantity received. Uses failure locations—the standout feature. If an inspection fails, you can redirect products to Repair or Scrap based on whether they're worth repairing. If they pass, they go directly to stock with good products.
Repair Inspection: Applied to repair operations. If repairs fail, products can be sent back to repair again. If they pass, they go to refurbished stock.
Help Desk Configuration:
Enable Returns on the customer support team, allowing return creation directly from tickets.
Total setup time: Approximately 4-5 minutes, all 100% standard Odoo—no Studio, no customization.
🛠️ The Flow in Action
Step 1 - Customer Support: A ticket arrives—the broken scooter from the presentation opening. Customer support clicks "Create Return" directly from the ticket. Odoo automatically detects the last sale for that customer, linking the return to the sales order and importing the serial number. An RMA number generates instantly.
Step 2 - Reception: The warehouse operator receives the broken scooter and performs the return inspection quality check. The scooter is broken and worth repairing, so the operator selects "Fail" and redirects it to Repair. Confirming and validating pushes the scooter to the repair area. Proactively, the operator creates a repair order directly from this view—automatically capturing product and sale information—and confirms it, queuing work for the repair team.
Step 3 - Repair: The repair technician arrives in the morning, checks available repairs, and starts the repair order. Components can be added if needed (not shown in the demo). After repair, the technician performs the repair inspection quality check. Tests pass, so the technician selects "Pass"—the scooter moves from repair to refurbished stock. Ending the repair completes the transition.
Step 4 - Stock Status: Navigating to inventory, the product moves show the scooter transitioned from repair to refurbished. Checking stock reveals 20 total scooters: 19 new, 1 refurbished. The system now manages scooters in two different statuses.
Step 5 - Resale: A customer enters the shop wanting a scooter. At €329, it's too expensive. The salesperson offers the refurbished scooter at 70% of the price (30% discount). The customer accepts. Creating the sales order and applying the discount, the system automatically reserves the refurbished scooter. Confirming the delivery completes the full loop—from ticket to return, inspection, repair, second inspection, refurbished stock, and resale to a different customer. True circular economy in Odoo.
📊 Addressing the Challenges
Unpredictability: Failure locations create flexible flows where goods can be redirected at any time, covering 99% of cases.
Traceability: Clicking the traceability button on the refurbished product reveals the complete lifecycle: shipment to the second customer, repair order, return, original delivery to the first customer, and original manufacturing order. One screen shows the entire life from production through return, repair, and resale. Robust traceability achieved.
Quality: The system records both quality checks—return inspection (failed) and repair inspection (passed)—providing complete quality audit trails.
💡 Key Insights from Q&A
Warranty Checking: Not yet fully supported in Odoo but actively being developed. John is pushing hard for this feature. Warranty information could potentially be stored in serial numbers as a workaround.
Replenishing Repair Parts: When adding components to repair orders, Odoo creates needs that trigger replenishment. Alternatively, maintain safety stock of common repair components.
Recycling/Upcycling: The repair app includes a "Recycle" function allowing products to be dismantled and components reinjected into stock.
Compliments: Multiple attendees complimented the presentation quality.
🎯 The Bottom Line: Embrace, Don't Avoid
Companies used to avoid returns—now they must embrace them. Reverse logistics improves customer satisfaction, reduces costs, and creates environmental impact. With the right software, reverse logistics becomes manageable—and Odoo can be that software.
The presentation demonstrates that combining five apps (Help Desk, Sales, Inventory, Repair, Quality) with three settings, three locations, one operation type, and two quality points, you can design a complete reverse logistics flow in minutes—entirely standard, no customization required.
🧠 Viewpoint: Odoo Perspective
⚠️ Disclaimer: AI-generated creative perspective inspired by Odoo's vision.
John's 15 years of logistics experience shaped how we built reverse logistics into Odoo. The three challenges—unpredictability, traceability, and quality—aren't theoretical problems; they're daily operational realities. Failure locations represent a design philosophy: don't force users into rigid paths; give them decision points where they can adapt to reality. The fact that a complete reverse logistics loop requires only standard features, configured in minutes, proves that good software doesn't mean more complexity—it means smart architecture. Traceability spanning from original manufacturing through customer use, return, repair, and resale isn't just a technical achievement; it's proof that Odoo understands the entire product lifecycle. Circular economy isn't a buzzword—it's an operational requirement, and we built Odoo to support it natively.
🏢 Viewpoint: Competitors (SAP / Microsoft / Others)
⚠️ Disclaimer: AI-generated fictional commentary. Not an official corporate statement.
Odoo's reverse logistics demonstration shows competent integration of returns, repair, and quality management for SMB use cases. The failure location concept is sound but basic—enterprise systems offer sophisticated disposition codes, multi-tier authorization workflows, and automated routing based on product categories, customer agreements, and warranty status. The traceability from manufacturing to repair and resale works for simple scenarios, but lacks the serialization standards (GS1, EPCIS), regulatory compliance tracking (RoHS, WEEE), and audit requirements that regulated industries demand. Repair management is functional but doesn't address complex scenarios: third-party repair networks, vendor return authorizations, depot repair operations, or advanced exchange programs. The five-minute configuration is impressive for simple cases, but enterprises require formal reverse logistics networks with cost recovery optimization, cross-company settlement, and integration with transportation management for return logistics. The circular economy vision is commendable, but lacks the sustainability reporting, carbon footprint tracking, and product passport capabilities that regulatory frameworks like EU's Digital Product Passport mandate. Odoo handles basic reverse logistics well—enterprises need comprehensive Product Lifecycle Management and Service Lifecycle Management platforms.
Disclaimer: This article contains AI-generated summaries and fictionalized commentaries for illustrative purposes. Viewpoints labeled as "Odoo Perspective" or "Competitors" are simulated and do not represent any real statements or positions. All product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.