Importance of closed-loop supply chain relationships for product remanufacturing

Abstract

Remanufacturing is an industrial process where used products are restored (remanufactured) to useful life. In comparison to manufacturing, remanufacturing has some general characteristics that complicate the supply chain and production system. For example, a company must collect the used products from the customers, and thus the timing and quality of the used products are usually unknown. Remanufacturing companies are dependent on customers to return used products (cores). In this paper, seven different types of closed-loop relationships for gathering cores for remanufacturing have been identified. The relationships identified are ownership-based, service-contract, direct-order, deposit-based, credit-based, buy-back and voluntary-based relationships. Building theory around these different types of relationships, several disadvantages and advantages are described in the paper. By exploring these relationships, a better understanding can be gained about the management of the closedloop supply chain and remanufacturing.

Circular Business Models: Defining a Concept and Framing an Emerging Research Field

“…These include the fields of Industrial Ecology [4,20,22], Product-Service Systems [23][24][25][26], Ecodesign [27,28], and Design Engineering for Functional Sales [29][30][31][32]. Generally, scholars in these fields have developed and studied a wide range of strategies for changing material flows to improve resource efficiency and value preservation.…”

“…Customer relationships can be developed, not only to create additional value for customers, but also to help remove barriers to the collection of products. For instance, Östlin et al [31] show that realising remanufacturing requires targeting of customer segments willing to return products and establish customer relationships that support the return of products, e.g., a service-contract or a buy-back scheme.…”

“…It should be noted that, depending on the circumstance, other resource efficiency strategies that do not cycle resources may have greater potential to improve resource efficiency. Therefore, the choice of resource efficiency strategy should be guided by life cycle assessment [31]. The analysis showed that authors regard resource efficiency strategies that enable substituting primary material input with secondary production, extending the useful life of products and parts, and closing material loops as the key strategies operationalised by circular business models (see Section 4).…”

Review of sustainable service-based business models in the Chinese truck sector

“…Be relieved of management of end-ofuse/end-of-life vehicles (Östlin et al, 2008;Thierry et al, 1995;Parlikad & McFarlane, 2010;Wei et al, 2015) On the one hand, result-oriented services create additional value for producer and customer, optimize vehicle efficiency during the consumption phase and enhance employee technical and relational skills. On the other hand, CLSC enables to retrieve value from cores and to mitigate environmental burdens caused by end-of-life vehicles.…”

Identifying Unique Characteristics of Disassembly for Various Product Recovery Methods with A Focus on Remanufacturing

“…In terms of product types, automotive products are the most co mmon [3], but other product types, such as photocopiers [8,11,12], forklift trucks [7], toner cart ridge [7] and telecommun ication devices [7,14] are all gaining in popularity. This evidence indicates that remanufacturing has spread widely across many countries and product types.…”