Sustainable Manufacturing

BITS Pilani Lecture 11

Pilani Campus
3R

Remanufacturing
Recycle
Reuse

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Motivation for 3R

Cost reduction
Scarcity of landfill sites
Cost of disposal

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 BITS Pilani
Pilani Campus

Remanufacturing
Remanufacturing

Remanufactured products typically have the same or

similar performance characteristics and quality standards
as new units.
Remanufacturing is an environmentally and economically
sound way to achieve many of the goals of sustainable
development. Remanufacturing closes the materials use
cycle and forms an essentially closed-loop
manufacturing system. Remanufacturing focuses on
value-added recovery, rather than just materials
recovery, i.e., recycling.

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Remanufacturing…

‘‘ . . . an industrial process in which worn-out products are

restored to like-new condition. Through a series of
industrial processes in a factory environment, a
discarded product is completely disassembled. Useable
parts are cleaned, refurbished, and put into inventory.
Then the new product is reassembled from the old and,
where necessary, new parts to produce a fully equivalent
and sometimes superior- in performance and expected
lifetime to the original new product.’’

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Remanufacturing…

Remanufacturing is distinctly different from repair

operations, since products are disassembled completely
and all parts are returned to like-new condition, which
may include cosmetic operations.
Remanufacturing is a form of waste avoidance since
products are reused rather than being discarded. These
discarded products are usually landfilled, despite any
residual value.
Remanufacturing also captures value-added remaining in
the product in the forms of materials, energy and labor.

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Class of Remanufacturing Goods

Capital goods
Consumer durable goods

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Capital Goods

Capital goods can be anything from complex military

weapon systems to manufacturing, mining, and
agricultural equipment to vending machines.
They constitute the majority of remanufacturing work.
Capital goods remanufacturing is also the more mature,
having existed in one form or another for much of the
twentieth century

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Consumer Durable Goods

Consumer durable goods, process costs can often exceed

the price of a new product, which has limited their use in
many industries. Large-scale remanufacturing of
products outside the domain of capital goods is still in its
infancy, and time will tell how this opportunity will yet be
exploited.
There are, however, some prominent examples of
successful remanufacturing of consumer durable
goods—automotive parts, computers, laser toner
cartridges, and single-use cameras are a few.

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The seven characteristics of
Remanufacturing

The uncertain timing and quantity of returns,

The need to balance returns with demands,
The disassembly of returned products,
The uncertainty in materials recovered from returned items,
The requirement for a reverse logistics network,
The complication of material matching restrictions, and
The problems of stochastic routings for materials for
remanufacturing operations and highly variable
processing times.

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Challenges in
Remanufacturing
The evidence suggests that production planning and
control activities are inherently more complex and
difficult for remanufacturers.

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Steps in Remanufacturing

Disassembly,
Cleaning,
Sorting,
Testing/Checking,
Reconditioning, and
Reassembly.

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Benefits of Remanufacturing

To business enterprises
To the workforce
To the consumer
To the society

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Business enterprises
firms that use remanufactured products, enabling them to reduce their capital investment
expenditures
OEMs, which can use the remanufacturing process and the remarketing of the resulting
products as a business strategy to increase profits
manufacturers of equipment used in the process, such as cleaning and test equipment,
optical gauges, and specialized so on
OEM stockholders, who would likely see greater growth and stability in their investments
(GE may be the best example of the possibilities that exist when remanufacturing is
incorporated into an OEM’s strategic vision)
Information technology suppliers, who would help build the IT infrastructure to support
remanufacturing and distribution process activities
Management consultants, who would assist new-condition product manufacturers in
incorporating remanufacturing into their business models
Design engineering software suppliers, who would develop design optimization tools for
the remanufacturing processes of disassembly and reassembly
Financial service firms, which would finance the capital investment needed for companies
to enter the remanufacturing sector
Third-party logistics suppliers, which would experience a large increase in reverse
logistics activity
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The workforce

Ben Hamper’s 1991 bestseller Rivethead casts light on the

monotony faced by the direct labor workforce on
shopfloor. Remanufacturing, by comparison, is a much
more dynamic and varied production environment.
Blue-collar workers require more initial training and skills,
with the long-term benefit of a broader skill set and
higher work satisfaction.
In addition, retired and laid-off factory workers would be in
high demand, providing the experience in disassembling
and reassembling products that they helped build years
before.

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Consumers

Remanufacturing brings lower prices to the consumer,

typically on the order of 30 to 40 percent less than
similar new products.
It also means more consumer choice, espe- cially for
discontinued products that are still available in mint
condition, which is currently the case in such industries
as retail auto parts.

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Society
Society is arguably the greatest beneficiary of remanufacturing. As a
material productivity initiative, the process has an intrinsic societal
benefit in that it reduces the volume of energy and natural resources
required to produce the goods we value.
Remanufactured products incur costs that are typically 40 to 65 percent
less than those incurred in the delivery of new products. This is
because most of the raw materials already exist in their final form and
thus require only a fraction of the material processing required of new
products.
In terms of energy consumption, remanufacturing a product requires only
about 15 percent of the energy used to make the product from scratch.
The estimated worldwide energy savings of current remanufacturing in
lieu of building new products is an incredible 400 trillion BTUs of energy
annually.
As a direct result of the energy savings, remanufacturing is also extremely
effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A weighted average of
140 pounds of CO2 is emitted for every million BTUs of energy
consumed

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 BITS Pilani
Pilani Campus

Recycling
Recycling

Recycling is ‘the series of activities by which discarded

materials are collected, sorted, processed, and used in
the production of new products
Recycling occurs when the product has met the original
design’s useful life and is not possible to remanufacture
or convert to other useful applications
it is environmentally better to recycle materials rather than
take them to a landfill site
the energy saving by recycling aluminium can be as high
as 91% by recycling scrap compared with the process of
using the primary raw material, bauxite

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Recycling …

the most mature waste avoidance strategy, with established

rates as high as 80% for certain products
develop a measure of the ‘recyclability’ of different
materials by assessing virgin, scrap and processed
economic values
Wastes can’t turn back into resources unless there is some
external source of energy.
“Recycling” doesn’t just happen on its own . . . it has to be
powered by an energy source

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3R relationship

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Self replenishing loop

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Definitions

Upgrade : Upgrade refers to any process that gives a

product enhanced functionality
Refurbishment: Refurbishing is the reprocessing of used
equipment at minimum cost in order to ensure that the
product performance is within the bounds of what is
considered acceptable for reuse
Reconditioning: Reconditioning is a process within
remanufacturing in which used components have their
condition restored to as good as new
Revalorization: Revalorization includes any process that
seeks to recover any embedded value in a discarded
product or material

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Definitions …

Reuse: Reuse means continuing to use an item after it has

been relinquished by its previous user, rather than
destroying, dumping or recycling it
Reuse ‘as is’: Reuse ‘as is’ refers to the reuse of a product
with minimal reprocessing
Further use: Further use is the use of a used product for a
different purpose than was originally intended
Repair: Repair refers either to actions performed to return a
product to functioning condition during service or to
actions at product end of life to return a component to
functioning condition

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The hierarchy of
Remanufacturing operations

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EOL scenario

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus