A Comparative Study of Models of Remarketing

Remanufacturing (or remarketing) is considered to have a high potential for achieving reduced production costs as well as reduced waste volume, through efficient use of resources. There are some variations of remanufacturing, including component reuse, refurbishing, retrofitting, upgrading, and even reselling as is (i.e., to second hand markets). This paper is an attempt to formally understand remanufacturing activities and to build their models that can further lead to design guidelines for remanufacturing. The paper illustrates remanufacturing activities of various categories of products and should be applicable to, or to a part, of the system. The remanufacturing models will dictate remanufacturing strategies about how cost and waste can be reduced, what consequences they have on the production and design environment, and the behaviour at the end of life of the product. These strategies are usually in the form of requirements and constraints. For each strategy the paper discusses and compares its advantages and disadvantages as well as its possibilities and restrictions.