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Procedia CIRP 61 (2017) 183 – 188

The 24th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering

New Opportunities and Incentives for Remanufacturing

by 2020´s Car Service Trends
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rolf Steinhiper 1*, Alexander Nagel 1
1
Bayreuth University, Universitaetsstrasse 30, 95447 Bayreuth, Germany

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 921-78516-100; fax: +49 921-557305. E-mail address: rolf.steinhilper@uni-bayreuth.de

Abstract

This contribution presents the results of a four-year R&D-project undertaken by a team of six scientists, expert engineers and practitioners of car
service technologies. Under the guidance of the authors they explored needs and challenges of tomorrow´s (2020´s) car service. Three new
categories of car service needs, mainly triggered by electronic and mechatronic car components, could be identified: Spare parts driven,
technology trend driven and phenomena driven new service needs. Ten challenging representatives within these categories were thoroughly
analyzed and new service options and approaches as solutions for 2020 and beyond could be developed. Rounding up these in five new clusters
of car service technologies of tomorrow it could be shown, that in particular Remanufacturing will both receive new opportunities and incentives,
because being stimulated by new service solutions, and that Remanufacturing will also considerably contribute to sustainable car life cycles of
the future. The contribution will accordingly present examples from new car components such as double clutch transmission, power steering,
LED-headlights, turbo chargers, driver assistant systems, carbon fiber bodyparts, common rail injectors, electro mobility components.

©
©2017
2017Published by Elsevier
The Authors. B.V. This
Published by isElsevier
an open B.V.
access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 24th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 24th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering
Keywords: Car Service Engineering; Remanufacturing; Mechatronics; Electronics; Failure Diagnosis

1. Introduction
By the year 2020, one billion passenger cars will roll on our
roads worldwide. Comprehensive engineering efforts
continuously have to provide appropriate technologies to keep
this impressive fleet running on the necessary levels regarding
reliability, safety and ecology – and all this within economic
constraints from their owners and drivers.
Today´s cars consist more and more of electronics:
meanwhile to such an extent, that already today fifty percent of
car repair work time is actually spent with the help of
computers, as recent studies have shown. At the same time,
innovation speed accelerates, product and market cycles
become shorter and shorter, and autonomously driving vehicles
are on the horizon.
Where is Car Service 2020 heading to? What kind of future
Knowhow, skills and new technologies will be needed? Can
spare part supplies for an exploding variety of car models still
be handled at affordable cost? Such questions formed the
background of a comprehensive four year project entitled “Car
Service Engineering 2020” proposed by the authors in 2010 and
granted to them by the Bavarian Ministry of Economy and
Innovation to work out from 2011 to 2015. Key findings and
results, described in a German final report, which in its details
is intended to serve as a competitive edge for the Bavarian Car
Service Market players and therefore is still restricted for
Bavarian internal use, are presented here for the first time on an
international stage.

2212-8271 © 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 24th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering
doi:10.1016/j.procir.2016.11.233
184 Ing. Rolf Steinhiper and Alexander Nagel / Procedia CIRP 61 (2017) 183 – 188

2. State of the Art of Car Service 4. Questioning the Main Challenges

With electronic hardware and software penetrating
passenger cars in recent years, car service work has moved
from experience and craftsmanship towards computerized
failure diagnosis and replacement of identified (or suspected)
components. “Components” being replaced are in most cases
no longer small parts like spark plug cables, bulbs, carburetor
gaskets, bearings, clutch discs and such. Instead
comprehensive (and expensive) subassemblies are being
replaced: the whole ignition/distribution system, the complete
steerable LED-headlight, the entire (Common Rail-) injection
system, an entire engine because of a simple bearing failure, or
the whole double clutch transmission, to use the range of
previously small service parts listed above. Also the individual
(and affordable) repair of engines or gear boxes on the work
bench of an experienced car service garage has gone lost – both
OEM-dealers and independent service operators meanwhile
prefer to sell a new unit as an expensive replacement to the
customer.
This practice is neither customer-oriented nor
environmental friendly, but a waste of values, skills and
material/energy resources.
A team of six scientists from the University of Bayreuth,
experts from Fraunhofer Applied R&D, and
practitioners/instructors of car service technologies from the
Chamber of Crafts in the region questioned more than one
thousand car service workshops about their main challenges
regarding 2020, their key observations regarding future spare
parts supply and their experiences and expectations regarding
computerized vehicles. This was done by both sending out a
questionnaire to car service workshops, inviting the recipients
to “invest 20 minutes of your time for 20 questions regarding
the year 2020” – and by visiting them for structured interviews.
Both OEM dealers of eleven automotive brands and also
independent garages had to be surveyed, figure 1. The project
attracted high interest and support from media (including TV),
so that during the seven month period of collecting the main
challenges also private car owners approached the project team,
adding important findings from their (mainly expensive)
experiences with service work on their computerized cars to the
survey.

3. Methodologies

To find answers if new car service technologies with a

horizon 2020 can be identified and/or developed to meet the
challenges described in the previous chapters, a four-year R&D
project has been undertaken under the guidance of the authors,
using a sequence of several methodologies
x a survey of the main challenges in more detail by
questioning 1254 car service centers by mail and
interviewing 50 car service experts in person at their
workplaces. This survey covered 2520 car service cases Fig. 1: Car Brands and Independent Garages interviewed in Order to Cover the
x an evaluation and assessment of the annual emergency Entire Car Service Market
road service statistics, provided by the roadside assistance
of the German Automobile Club “ADAC”. This statistic In addition, the mentioned statistics from emergency
covered 3.9 million car failures on the road and their roadside services showed that meanwhile classic failures like
reasons engine breakdowns are in a minority of just 8% of car
x service case studies of 50 failed car components, identified breakdown reasons, while electronic and electric reasons
as “typical” for representing today´s cars´ problems by the represent more than 60%, figure 2.
previous survey and assessment, inside the authors` own
institute and laboratories
x rating the 50 service case studies and selecting the ten most
frequent/most challenging ones
x R&D and experiments regarding suitable new service
technologies/remanufacturing options for these ten service
cases and their failed car components who at present are
not repaired but just replaced by new and
expensive/comprehensive subassemblies
x developing ten new service processes for the most frequent
service cases at the authors´ laboratories and their outside
partners. Clustering them into five new forms/approaches
of future car service, in order to make these approaches
Fig. 2: Reasons for Roadside Car Emergencies (rounded percentages according
also applicable to service cases and problems outside those
to ADAC Germany).
ten which have been solved in detail already during the
project.
 Ing. Rolf Steinhiper and Alexander Nagel / Procedia CIRP 61 (2017) 183 – 188
Regarding the contents and time shares of up-to-date car
service work, it was found that just for servicing apparent
failures of the daily operation of a car, on average 35% of the
overall time spent is needed (wasted?) for electronic failure
diagnosis – 43% are spent for the replacement of (mainly new
and expensive) spare parts/subassemblies and only 22% can be
characterized as time to repair a part or component so that it
can be further used, figure 3.
Fig. 3: Questioning 1254 Car Service Centers in 2011
Regarding the role of remanufacturing and remanufactured
parts needed to meet future requirements of affordable spare
parts supply, the results from all answers received, representing
2520 car service cases, showed a very strong support for
remanufactured parts, figure 4. Besides, with the rise of ebay-
trade and such, also used parts were considered of growing
importance by 33% of the parties questioned.
Fig. 4: Results from 2520 Answers to Questionnaire and Media
5. Defining New Categories of Car Service Needs
The project assigned to the authors by the Bavarian
Ministery of Economy and Innovation of course not only
contained the task to collect main challenges and trends, but
mainly to develop new solutions for the car service
technologies of 2020 and beyond. This could be achieved in
two steps: first, by identifying the ten most frequent and most
challenging service cases and second by categorizing them into
typical new service needs. There the authors had to deal with a
185
real “jungle” of complaints and problems from car service
workshops and customers circulating more or less around the
same situation: failure diagnosis among car mechatronics and
electronics to detect the defect component takes too long, skills
to service new car technologies and/or materials are still
underdeveloped, necessary spare parts or components are very
expensive; so the cost of the whole service tasks often exceeds
the remaining value of a car (if older than 7 years) leading to
electronical total damages, figure 5. Even worse: quite often it
happens, that even after careful failure diagnosis and exchange
of the suspected failed part, later on the road the same failure
occurs again. A wide range of examples for this “standard”
situation came from the automotive power train (engine
management, turbochargers, common rail injection systems,
double clutch/automatic transmissions, electrically powered
vehicles), but also from the car body and/or chassis (steerable
headlights, new coach materials, power steering systems, …)
infotainment (navigation systems, climate control, …) or could
only be defined as “mysterious”, because cars more and more
show sporadic failures which happen on the road but cannot be
observed when visiting the service workshop – usually rooting
back to electronic reasons.
Fig. 5: Main Reasons for Total Damage/Total Loss of a Car before its End of
Life
186 Ing. Rolf Steinhiper and Alexander Nagel / Procedia CIRP 61 (2017) 183 – 188

Combining the findings of their surveys with the approaches for steerable LED headlights, with new solutions to
recommendations of experts in the field, the authors defined the open them, figure 7, to replace or maintain their failed
following ten service cases as most frequent and challenging in components, figure 8, not to say to remanufacture the whole
2020`s cars unit when needed, avoiding the very high cost of a new
x double clutch transmission steerable LED headlight.
x hydraulic or electric power steering
x LED-headlights
x turbochargers
x active driver assistance systems
x carbon fiber car body parts
x common rail injection systems
x e-mobility components
x sporadic failures
x remote diagnostics

To create a roadmap for new service

solutions/technologies, the authors then classified and defined
three new service categories using the ten most frequent service
cases as their typical representatives, figure 6.

x Spare Parts Driven Service Needs Fig. 7: Opening LED-Headlights for Repair/Remanufacturing Purposes: (Top
x Technology Trend Driven Service Needs and Bottom Left: Oven to Dissolve Glued Polymer Parts. Bottom Right:
x Phenomena Driven Service Needs Ceramic Vibrating Knife to Cut Welded Polymer Parts)

Fig. 6: Three Categories of Car Service Needs with 4/4/2 Representing

Components/Cases Fig. 8: LED Headlights and Repair/Remanufacturing Solutions Developed

These three categories were chosen (and named) in order
to serve as a possible guidance when looking for new service
solutions for challenges lying outside these ten defined most
frequent service cases listed before, whose challenges have
already be addressed during the project:
6. Developing New Car Service Options and Technologies:
Opportunities and Incentives for Remanufacturing
In the three years 2012, 2013, 2014 the project team developed
necessary new car service options in close cooperation with
pioneering car service workshops, for all ten representatives of
the identified three categories of new service needs.
Among them were new remanufacturing and repair
A further achievement was the development of new
remanufacturing technologies for common rail injectors,
enabling to recover their most expensive subassemblies like
injector bodies and nozzles, for both types of injectors:
magnetically or piezo actuated, figure 9. This could only be
achieved by leaving behind the classic five step sequence of
remanufacturing
(disassembly/cleaning/testing/reconditioning/reassembly) and
creating a new sequence, figure 10.
 Ing. Rolf Steinhiper and Alexander Nagel / Procedia CIRP 61 (2017) 183 – 188
Fig. 9: Common Rail Injectors: Types and Subassemblies
Fig. 10: Process Sequence for Remanufactruing of Common Rail Injectors
Besides, also new repair technologies for common rail
injectors on site sould be developed – avoiding the needs to
take them out of the car or even disassemble them. There were
promising results regarding the clean up of contaminated
injectors by running the engine with a special cleaning solvent
instead of the regular fuel for a defined cycle in the service
workshop. “Before-after”-examples are presented in figure 11.
Fig. 11: Results of On-Site-Cleaning of Injectors
So, when summarizing and rounding up the results of the
four years’ work of the project, remanufacturing knowhow
proved of course to be a key element of car service engineering
2020, but should be joined (or surrounded) by four other new
and interesting technological approaches thoroughly
investigated and developed in the project, out of which repair
technologies on site has already been mentioned above.
These approaches have been clustered as: Innovations towards
Replacing Smaller Modules / Expanding Remanufacturing
Knowhow towards new Components / New Repair
187
Technologies on site / New Networks of Communications and
Cooperations / 3D- Printing
7. Five New Car Service Technologies
Figure 12 shows the five new car service technologies which
could be identified as innovative clusters of car service
engineering 2020, with “Expanding Remanufacturing
Knowhow towards new Components” still highlighted
according to the many (also surprising/unexpected) findings of
new components suitable for remanufacturing during the
project, figure 13.
Fig. 12: Five Cross Cutting New Car Service Technologies with
Remanufacturing Knowhow as a Key Element
Fig. 13: Identified Mechatronic Components with Remanufacturing Potential
Two of the surrounding new car service technologies,
notably these in the first line in figure 12 “Innovations towards
Replacing Smaller Modules” and in the fifth line “3D-
Printing”, which have been investigated and developed in the
project, can again be presented by the example of steerable
LED-headlights.
These components have already been discussed before as a
suitable new product for remanufacturing, but they often suffer
minor outside damages from a little bump or so like losing a
small clip for fastening it into the car body. The small clip has
broken off, but is so far not being supplied by anybody (often
by intention, because the OEM or OES prefers to sell the
expensive complete headlight as a profitable spare part
business).
188 Ing. Rolf Steinhiper and Alexander Nagel / Procedia CIRP 61 (2017) 183 – 188
Here an “Innovation towards Replacing Smaller Modules”
can take place with the help of 3D printing, figure 14.
Fig. 14: Repair/Rescue of an Expensive Headlight by 3D-Printed-Small
Replacement Part
Several more examples of successful applications of the
identified five new clusters of car service technologies will be
presented during the conference or can be referred to the
challenges described in most recent publications of the authors
listed in the references – just to keep the length of this paper
within acceptable limits.
8. On the Horizon: Self Driving Vehicles
While developing the key solutions for affordable car
service technologies for today and tomorrow to contribute to
sustainable car life cycles of the future, already the next
challenge appears on the horizon:
It has become more or less common sense within the
automotive industry, that by 2020 they will offer vehicles
capable to drive from a highway entrance to a highway exit
fully autonomously – without any interaction required from the
driver, who e.g. can work on his e-mails during the trip. First
pilot tests are proving feasibility already, figure 15.
Fig. 15: Autonomously Driving Cars: Next Challenge for Sophisticated Car
Service
By 2025, as forecasts predict, this will also be possible in
inner-city traffic. Who will be able (and take responsibility) for
servicing these autonomous functions of such cars beyond
tomorrow? It looks like these tasks will not be restricted to
OEM-Workshops only – as the airline industry shows, their
autopilots and such are not exclusively serviced by the OEMs
– but even by the users (airlines) themselves. So might future
drivers or car owners even discover a path back to “Do it
yourself Repair” (?), which meanwhile has to a large extent
been ruled out by the complexity of today`s car electronics?
Who knows – at least it seems realistic to expect that one day
car owners will update their car software regularly by
downloading it themselves instead of having to show up at an
OEM´s car service workshop.
9. Conclusion
The project work described in this paper has shown, that
current trends in car service operations have moved towards
expensive, often unaffordable and always wasteful
replacements of comprehensive mechatronic/electronic
subassemblies following the suggestions of a car diagnosis
computer. New service technologies and approaches are
therefore needed in order to avoid a throw-away-mentality
when cars become seven years old, when service and spare
parts cost can easily exceed the car´s remaining market value.
Using ten typical car service cases thoroughly identified as
representing this technological challenge, new service
solutions have been developed accordingly and have been
verified in the field. The ten new service solutions have then
been clustered into five new service technology approaches.
There it can be recognized, that new applications of
Remanufacturing are one important approach among four
others. Three further approaches like Repairing on Site,
Innovations by Replacing Smaller Modules and 3D Printing
will be based on a revival of service craftsmanship in
combination with new technologies, while the remaining
approach New Networks for Communication and Cooperation
also for Car Service Tasks will benefit from many new
opportunities provided by the internet and social media.
References
[1] Steinhilper, R.; Nagel, A.; et al.: Studie: Kfz-Service-
Engineering 2020. Technologieentwicklung,
Ersatzteileversorgung und Refabrikation für das Kfz von
morgen, http://www.kfz-service-engineering-2020.de/, 2016.
[2] Steinhilper, R.; Weiland, F.: Exploring New Horizons for
Remanufacturing: An Up-to-date Overview of Industries,
Products and Technologies. In Procedia CIRP, 2015, 29; p.
769–773.
[3] Steinhilper, R.; Muenster, V.; Nagel, A.: Remanufacturing
Technology Developments for New Automotive
Products: Conference paper in EcoDesign 2015 International
Symposium, Tokyo 2015.