http://www.journalofremanufacturing.com The latest research articles published by Journal of Remanufacturing 2013-04-26T00:00:00Z The consideration of external costs is becoming more important in supply network design, as companies are under increasing pressure to reduce the environmental and social impacts of their operations. This paper presents a single time period, single-product mixed integer linear programming formulation, which considers such external costs, as well as the impact of waste disposal. The model presented considers a network of suppliers, manufacturing facilities, customers, scrap recyclers, general recycling facilities and landfill sites and makes facility location and allocation decisions so as to minimise both the economic and external costs of all network operations. The model was formulated using the What'sBest Excel add-in and tested on a commercial case study concerning the supply network operations of Hydram, a leading sheet metal fabrication company, considering three different scenarios. Details of how the external and economic costs were determined are included, with reference to the literature. By analysis of the experimental results, commercial recommendations for facility location are made, and the managerial uses of the model for socio-environmentally responsible decision-making are discussed. The benefits and limitations of the proposed model are also discussed. http://www.journalofremanufacturing.com/content/3/1/5 Dominic Ansbro Qing Wang Journal of Remanufacturing 2013, null:5 2013-04-26T00:00:00Z doi:10.1186/2210-4690-3-5 /content/figures/2210-4690-3-5-toc.gif Journal of Remanufacturing 2210-4690 ${item.volume} 5 2013-04-26T00:00:00Z PDF Repaired compressors are compared with remanufactured and new compressors in terms of economic and environmental benefits. A detailed life cycle assessment has been carried out for compressors under three manufacturing strategies: repaired, remanufactured and new equipment. The life cycle assessment of the global warming potential of repaired compressors varies from 4.38 to 119 kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e), depending on the type of components replaced. While greenhouse gas emissions from the remanufactured compressors (110 to 168 kg CO2-e) are relatively higher than those from the repaired ones (4.4 to 119 kg CO2-e), a new compressor has been found to produce a larger amount of greenhouse gas emissions (1,590 kg CO2-e) compared to both repaired and remanufactured compressors. Repairing failed compressors has been found to offer end users both dollar and carbon savings in contrast to remanufactured and new compressors. The research also found that extended lifetime is more important than the manufacturing processes in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Since a remanufactured compressor offers a longer life than a repaired compressor, the replacement of the latter with the former can avoid 33% to 66% of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with a new compressor production with a lifetime of 15 to 25 years. http://www.journalofremanufacturing.com/content/3/1/4 Wahidul Biswas Victor Duong Peter Frey Mohammad Islam Journal of Remanufacturing 2013, null:4 2013-04-25T00:00:00Z doi:10.1186/2210-4690-3-4 /content/figures/2210-4690-3-4-toc.gif Journal of Remanufacturing 2210-4690 ${item.volume} 4 2013-04-25T00:00:00Z PDF As global demand for consumer goods continues to rise, the problem of waste electrical and electronic equipment (or e-waste) increases. E-waste is of particular concern to the world’s governments and environmentalists alike, not just because of the sheer quantity that is being produced annually, but also because e-waste often contains both hazardous materials and scarce or valuable materials. Much research is now focused upon how this waste can be treated safely, economically, and in an environmentally sound manner. This paper presents the findings from a literature review and case study research conducted as a small part of the Globally Recoverable and Eco-friendly E-equipment Network with Distributed Information Service Management (GREENet) project. The GREENet project aims to share knowledge and expertise in e-waste treatment across Europe (in this case, the UK) and China. The focus of this particular study was upon ‘design for remanufacture’ and e-waste in China: as a remanufacturing industry begins to emerge, are Chinese original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) prepared to design more remanufacturable products and could electrical and electronic products become a part of this industry? Findings presented in this paper suggest that design for remanufacture could become more relevant to Chinese OEMs in the near future, as environmental legislation becomes increasingly stringent and a government remanufacturing pilot scheme expands. However, findings from case studies of Chinese e-waste recyclers would suggest that electrical and electronic products are not presently highly suited to the remanufacturing process. http://www.journalofremanufacturing.com/content/3/1/3 Gillian Hatcher Winifred Ijomah James F C Windmill Journal of Remanufacturing 2013, null:3 2013-03-14T00:00:00Z doi:10.1186/2210-4690-3-3 /content/figures/2210-4690-3-3-toc.gif Journal of Remanufacturing 2210-4690 ${item.volume} 3 2013-03-14T00:00:00Z XML The remanufacturing industry as a whole and the automotive sector in particular have, over the years, proven to be beneficial to the environment and economically lucrative to the companies involved as well as to their customers. However, remanufacturing is associated with complicating characteristics, not least to mention the process of core acquisition.The automotive industry is one of the earliest adapters of remanufacturing. Parts like engines, brake calipers and servo pumps are common targets for remanufacturing. Modern cars also have several embedded computers, often referred to as electronic control units that communicate, share information and verify each other over a Controller Area Network (CAN) bus. Due to their high value and an increasing trend in the amount of CAN bus mechatronic devices, interest in their remanufacture is growing.Previous research has shown that it is preferable that the remanufacturer is an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), or has a close relation to the OEM, in order to achieve a well-performing remanufacturing business. In the automotive industry, there are many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that perform remanufacturing; for these enterprises, the challenges to have a profitable business are even harder. This is because the OEMs will not release any information on the communication parameters and therefore will not support the independent remanufacturing business. As a consequence, the independent remanufacturers, often SMEs, have to perform substantial reverse engineering.This paper presents a qualitative research study, based on interviews at SMEs regarding challenges linked to the reverse logistics of SMEs remanufacturing and trading used automotive mechatronic devices, to identify specific challenges concerning the collection phase of automotive mechatronic remanufacturing. Challenges previously identified by researchers are confirmed, additional challenges within the collection phase are recognized, and challenges expected to arise when remanufacturing and trading automotive electronic CAN bus mechatronic devices are identified. The major concern for the involved companies when commencing future challenges is the handling, transportation and storing of cores. Even though the cores today mainly consist of mechanical devices, these challenges are still present; they are expected, however, to become even more crucial when cores contain a higher degree of mechatronic devices. http://www.journalofremanufacturing.com/content/3/1/2 Erik Sundin Otto Dunbäck Journal of Remanufacturing 2013, null:2 2013-02-06T00:00:00Z doi:10.1186/2210-4690-3-2 /content/figures/2210-4690-3-2-toc.gif Journal of Remanufacturing 2210-4690 ${item.volume} 2 2013-02-06T00:00:00Z XML Remanufacturing is the process of rebuilding used products that ensures that the quality of remanufactured products is equivalent to that of new ones. Although the theme is gaining ground, it is still little explored due to lack of knowledge, the difficulty of visualizing it systemically, and implementing it effectively. Few models treat remanufacturing as a system. Most of the studies still treated remanufacturing as an isolated process, preventing it from being seen in an integrated manner. Therefore, the aim of this work is to organize the knowledge about remanufacturing, offering a vision of remanufacturing system and contributing to an integrated view about the theme. The methodology employed was a literature review, adopting the General Theory of Systems to characterize the remanufacturing system. This work consolidates and organizes the elements of this system, enabling a better understanding of remanufacturing and assisting companies in adopting the concept. http://www.journalofremanufacturing.com/content/3/1/1 Ana Barquet Henrique Rozenfeld Fernando Forcellini Journal of Remanufacturing 2013, null:1 2013-01-23T00:00:00Z doi:10.1186/2210-4690-3-1 /content/figures/2210-4690-3-1-toc.gif Journal of Remanufacturing 2210-4690 ${item.volume} 1 2013-01-23T00:00:00Z XML Sustainability is an international issue with increasing concern and becomes a crucial driver for the industry in international competition. Sustainability encompasses the three dimensions: environment, society and economy. This paper presents the results from a sustainability assessment of a product. To prevent burden shifting, the whole life cycle of the products is necessary to be taken into account. For the environmental dimension, life cycle assessment (LCA) has been practiced for nearly 40 years and is the only one standardised by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) (14040 and 14044). Life cycle approaches for the social and economic dimensions are currently under development. Life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) is a complementary implementation of the three techniques: LCA (environmental), life cycle costing (LCC - economic) and social LCA (SLCA - social). This contribution applies the state-of-the-art LCSA on remanufacturing of alternators aiming at supporting managers and product developers in their decision-making to design product and plant. The alternator is the electricity generator in the automobile vehicle which produces the needed electricity. LCA and LCC are used to assess three different alternator design scenarios (namely conventional, lightweight and ultra-lightweight). The LCA and LCC results show that the conventional alternator is the most promising one. LCSA of three different locations (Germany, India and Sierra Leone) for setting the remanufacturing mini-factory, a worldwide applicable container, are investigated on all three different sustainability dimensions: LCA, LCC and SLCA. The location choice is determined by the SLCA and the design alternatives by the LCA and LCC. The case study results show that remanufacturing potentially causes about 12% of the emissions and costs compared to producing new parts. The conventional alternator with housing of iron cast performs better in LCA and LCC than the lightweight alternatives with aluminium housing. The optimal location of remanufacturing is dependent on where the used alternators are sourced and where the remanufactured alternators are going to be used. Important measures to improve the sustainability of the remanufacturing process in life cycle perspective are to confirm if the energy efficiency of the remanufactured part is better than the new part, as the use phase dominates from an environmental and economical point of view. The SLCA should be developed further, focusing on the suitable indicators and conducting further case studies including the whole life cycle. http://www.journalofremanufacturing.com/content/2/1/5 Erwin Schau Marzia Traverso Matthias Finkbeiner Journal of Remanufacturing 2012, null:5 2012-12-13T00:00:00Z doi:10.1186/2210-4690-2-5 /content/figures/2210-4690-2-5-toc.gif Journal of Remanufacturing 2210-4690 ${item.volume} 5 2012-12-13T00:00:00Z XML PurposeThe question of resource scarcity and emerging pressure of environmental legislations has brought a new challenge for the manufacturing industry. On the one hand, there is a huge population that demands a large quantity of commodities; on the other hand, these demands have to be met by minimum resources and pollution. Resource conservative manufacturing (ResCoM) is a proposed holistic concept to manage these challenges. The successful implementation of this concept requires cross functional collaboration among relevant fields, and among them, closed loop supply chain is an essential domain. The paper aims to highlight some misconceptions concerning the closed loop supply chain, to discuss different challenges, and in addition, to show how the proposed concept deals with those challenges through analysis of key performance indicators (KPI). Methods: The work presented in this paper is mainly based on the literature review. The analysis of performance of the closed loop supply chain is done using system dynamics, and the Stella software has been used to do the simulation.FindingsThe results of the simulation depict that in ResCoM; the performance of the closed loop supply chain is much enhanced in terms of supply, demand, and other uncertainties involved. The results may particularly be interesting for industries involved in remanufacturing, researchers in the field of closed loop supply chain, and other relevant areas.OriginalityThe paper presented a novel research concept called ResCoM which is supported by system dynamics models of the closed loop supply chain to demonstrate the behavior of KPI in the closed loop supply chain. http://www.journalofremanufacturing.com/content/2/1/4 Farazee Asif Carmine Bianchi Amir Rashid Cornel Mihai Nicolescu Journal of Remanufacturing 2012, null:4 2012-11-06T00:00:00Z doi:10.1186/2210-4690-2-4 /content/figures/2210-4690-2-4-toc.gif Journal of Remanufacturing 2210-4690 ${item.volume} 4 2012-11-06T00:00:00Z XML Background: The remanufacturing plan of perfect cost makes reference to the remanufacturing plan of an optimal solution of the economic lot-sizing problem with remanufacturing (ELSR). In this paper, we address the problem of determining the quantities of the remanufacturing plan of perfect cost in an independent way. Results: Assuming that the periods where remanufacturing is carried out are known in advance and certain other assumptions on the costs, we can show that the total remanufacturing quantity of a remanufacturing plan of perfect cost can be determined separately and in a time-effective way. Conclusions: We consider that the theoretical results obtained in this paper contribute to a deeper knowledge of the characteristics of the ELSR optimal solutions. Thus, the results obtained can be used to develop an effective algorithm for solving the ELSR. http://www.journalofremanufacturing.com/content/2/1/3 Pedro Piñeyro Omar Viera Journal of Remanufacturing 2012, null:3 2012-10-13T00:00:00Z doi:10.1186/2210-4690-2-3 /content/figures/2210-4690-2-3-toc.gif Journal of Remanufacturing 2210-4690 ${item.volume} 3 2012-10-13T00:00:00Z XML Manufacturing contributes heavily to environmental life cycle measures such as energy, material use, and water consumption through depletion and pollution. To lessen the environmental impacts, a number of initiatives have been developed. One of such initiatives is the used product take back, a process through which manufacturers collect used products and remanufacture them to like-new condition. However, remanufacturing of the used products at a modest cost is becoming a daunting task for many manufacturers due to the increasing complexity in many products. To mitigate this remanufacturing challenge, this paper develops a metric to quantify the remanufacturability incorporated into the new product at the design stage. The metric is based on entropy, a phenomenon well known in engineering. http://www.journalofremanufacturing.com/content/2/1/2 Monsuru Ramoni Hong-Chao Zhang Journal of Remanufacturing 2012, null:2 2012-10-11T00:00:00Z doi:10.1186/2210-4690-2-2 /content/figures/2210-4690-2-2-toc.gif Journal of Remanufacturing 2210-4690 ${item.volume} 2 2012-10-11T00:00:00Z XML This paper proposes a method for supporting the design of product lifecycles. The main approach involves supporting designers in determining a lifecycle strategy by describing lifecycle scenarios at an early stage of lifecycle design. The authors define a representational scheme for the lifecycle scenario and outline a support system based on the idea of the Cognitive Design Process model allowing the designers to examine various possibilities of lifecycle strategy. A number of alternative scenarios are managed by the Truth Maintenance System implemented in this approach. Finally, in order to embody the strategy in the later stages, the system derives requirements for product and process design. This paper outlines the lifecycle scenario of a cellular phone as a case study, which indicates the system's suitability for computer-aided description of scenarios and its facilitation of lifecycle strategy development. http://www.journalofremanufacturing.com/content/2/1/1 Shinichi Fukushige Kazuhiro Yamamoto Yasushi Umeda Journal of Remanufacturing 2012, null:1 2012-01-17T00:00:00Z doi:10.1186/2210-4690-2-1 /content/figures/2210-4690-2-1-toc.gif Journal of Remanufacturing 2210-4690 ${item.volume} 1 2012-01-17T00:00:00Z XML