Remanufacturing Assessment Tool

Remanufacturing Primer

The purpose of the Remanufacturing Assessment Tool is to provide corporate decision makers with the ability to assess the suitability of a product to be remanufactured. Remanufacturing is an industrial process by which retired or non-functional products are returned to “like-new” or “better than new” condition. Over the years, Remanufacturing has become one of the most widely adopted implementation strategies for extending product life cycle, closing the loop on material flows, and reducing total material consumption. The process of remanufacturing can contribute significantly to the overall sustainability of a product program. This can be seen by studying large corporations such as Caterpillar, Xerox, and Arvin Meritor, which are widely recognized for their successful product remanufacturing programs. The level of remanufacturing success achieved by these organizations was attained through innovative product development programs focused on the entire product life cycle.

Decisions made early in development can dramatically impact the full life-cycle cost of the product. Huthwaite[1] revealed that a product design is responsible for only 5% of a product’s cost; however, the design is responsible for determining 75% or more of the manufacturing cost. Nevins and Whitney[2] show that 70% of a product’s life cycle cost is determined in the design phase. It is clearly important to educate the design team on the full life cycle impact of the product, and to provide them with tools to be used as early as possible to enable them to minimize the full life cycle cost. The product development team plays a leading role by impacting how efficiently a design uses material, energy, and controls waste. In 2006, Nasr and Thurston proposed three laws of sustainable product development[3]:

  1. Minimize material and energy resources needed to satisfy product function and consumer demand.
  2. Maximize usage of expended resources.
  3. Minimize or eliminate the adverse impacts of waste and emissions.

This reinforces that the overall viability of achieving improved sustainable production metrics, for a given product or product family, can be greatly influenced by the design criteria for the original product concept. Figure 1 illustrates the concept that decisions made when the least amount of detailed product design knowledge is available often serves to influence the product sustainability the most.

Graph showing how time impacts the ability to change a product during the development cycle
Figure 1: Ability to influence sustainability metrics

Remanufacturing (aka ‘reman’) is a process that recovers the embodied value of the product and therefore impacts the sustainability of the product. Studies have shown that remanufacturing can recover 85% of the value within the product.[4] Remanufacturing is a production process though which products are systematically disassembled, cleaned, and inspected for wear. Damaged components are replaced, feature upgrades can be incorporated, and the product is reassembled and re-qualified[5]. For this reason, reman differs from other recovery processes in its completeness: a remanufactured machine or component should match the same customer expectations, performance, reliability, and life cycle as new machines.

Remanufacturing can impact the cost structure during the entire life-cycle, and design techniques can be applied to increase the remanufacturing recovered value; therefore, decisions to include remanufacturing as a part of the program must be made as early in the product development cycle as possible. Fox[6] contends that the earliest product development phase, “pre-concept”, exists to validate the business opportunity by evaluating the product options against the business case itself. This validation however must be appropriate for the pre-concept phase of a program given the level of detail and availability of data at this early stage.

Remanufacturing is a strategic decision that is not solely based on a single product. A company must decide whether it wants to add remanufacturing into its product support portfolio. It must decide whether it has the know-how and the infrastructure to support remanufacturing. It must decide whether it can overcome barriers related to policy or market if they exist. Once a company can commit to remanufacturing as a global product support strategy, each product it produces can be evaluated to determine the business opportunity.

While remanufacturing can be used to recover the residual value of products at end of life, it must also not conflict with the current business model of the company. In order to better understand the implications of remanufacturing, a company must assess the current corporate strategy in conjunction with market acceptance and customer requirements. The company must also factor in existing sourcing agreements, institutional knowledge, and future legislation or barriers to the viability of the program.

Next, the company must assess the product portfolio’s applicability to using the remanufacturing process. The potential benefit associated with the product must be sufficient to warrant recovery and processing. The product design must be viable into the future long enough to achieve the desired contribution to the business case and the sustainable production metrics.

Finally, the company must determine how to integrate remanufacturing into their global product support strategy. Consideration must be given to the logistical factors associated with the intended remanufacturing deployment model. The remanufacturing program must be structured so that it can best meet the needs of the organization and results in optimized sustainability metrics.

Through the use of the Remanufacturing Assessment Tool, users are led through analyzing attributes that are common to remanufacturable products. Areas that need more analysis or that limit remanufacturing are flagged and design guidelines are provided to enable improvement. Thus, with a positive outcome, remanufacturing could be added as a product requirement and the product could be designed to enhance recovery.

References

1Huthwaite, B., 1988 Designing in Quality. Quality, 27 (11), 34-35

2Nevins, J. L., and Whitney, D.E., 1989, Concurrent Design of Products and Processes (New York: McGraw-Hill), pp 2-3

3Nasr, N. and Thurston, M., 2006, Remanufacturing: A Key Enabler to Sustainable Product Systems, Proceedings for the 13th CIRP International Conference on Life Cycle Engineering.

4Allen, J., Cradle-to-Cradle: Achieving the Vision Through Remanufacturing, The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris.

5 Nasr, N., et al., 2002, Closing the Loop: Design Tools for Sustainable Products, EPA Report, Washington, D.C.

6 Fox, J., (1993) Quality Through Design: The Key to Successful Product Delivery, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, ISBN 0-07-707781-4, pg 183