How can Remanufacturing Processes become Leaner?

In this paper, seven remanufacturing companies are compared from a lean process perspective. Most of the companies experienced uncertainty regarding how many and when the cores arrived at the remanufacturing facilities, making planning more difficult. Furthermore, the companies reported high inventory levels as a problem. Hence, the companies often had a high number of cores, spare parts or half-finished products in storage, awaiting customers or as spare parts and thus tying up extensive space and capital within the process. The three remanufacturing steps inspection, cleaning and reprocessing were also shown to be crucial for most of the companies. In summary, one can see that there are some general issues for the remanufacturing firms to improve in order to achieve a more lean/effective process. Although only seven remanufacturing companies are analysed in this case study, one can see that the remanufacturing processes have similar characteristics within the same branch.