RECLAIM: Toward a New Era of Refurbishment and Remanufacturing of Industrial Equipment

Abstract

Refurbishment and remanufacturing are the industrial processes whereby used products or parts that constitute the product are restored. Remanufacturing is the process of restoring the functionality of the product or a part of it to “as-new” quality, whereas refurbishment is the process of restoring the product itself or part of it to “like-new” quality, without being as thorough as remanufacturing. Within this context, the EU-funded project RECLAIM presents a new idea on refurbishment and remanufacturing based on big data analytics, machine learning, predictive analytics, and optimization models using deep learning techniques and digital twin models with the aim of enabling the stakeholders to make informed decisions about whether to remanufacture, upgrade, or repair heavy machinery that is toward its end-of-life. The RECLAIM project additionally provides novel strategies and technologies that enable the reuse of industrial equipment in old, renewed, and new factories, with the goal of saving valuable resources by recycling equipment and using them in a different application, instead of discarding them after use. For instance, RECLAIM provides a simulation engine using digital twin in order to predict maintenance needs and potential faults of large industrial equipment. This simulation engine keeps the virtual twins available to store all available information during the lifetime of a machine, such as maintenance operations, and this information can be used to perform an economic estimation of the machine's refurbishment costs. The RECLAIM project envisages developing new technologies and strategies aligned with the circular economy and in support of a new model for the management of large industrial equipment that approaches the end of its design life. This model aims to reduce substantially the opportunity cost of retaining strategies (both moneywise and resourcewise) by allowing relatively old equipment that faces the prospect of decommissioning to reclaim its functionalities and role in the overall production system.

A framework of digital technologies for the circular economy: Digital functions and mechanisms

“…Track and trace provide insights into the availability and condition of used products and spare parts (Ingemarsdotter et al, 2020; Subramoniam et al, 2021). The information can enable companies to make personalized remanufacturing processes that minimizes wastes and material consumption (Moreno et al, 2019), to optimize process efficiency as referred elsewhere (Kerin & Pham, 2020; Zacharaki et al, 2020), or to secure the spare parts sourcing, which can often be a significant challenge for industry (Dev et al, 2020; Garrido‐Hidalgo et al, 2020; Rosa et al, 2020). Other possibilities include predicting the remaining lifetime of products, checking the functionality during remanufacturing, and supporting design for remanufacturing (Aziz et al, 2021; Blömeke, Rickert, et al, 2020; Garrido‐Hidalgo et al, 2020).…”

“…On the one hand, autonomous systems can monitor processes and systems with minimum human interaction (Zacharaki et al, 2020)…”

Predictive Maintenance for Remanufacturing Based on Hybrid-Driven Remaining Useful Life Prediction

“…The future degradation states could be estimated by the learned reliability function at the inspection time T. The equipment should be shut down when the reliability is close to the specific threshold. Therefore, the RUL can be defined as: RUL(T) = in f {r : R(r + T) ≥ ω|R} (8) where RUL(T) is the RUL at T, R(r + T) is the estimated reliability at r + T, and ω is the failure threshold.…”

“…Based on the analysis of the results, it is obvious that the reliability function is dynamically changing where model parameters will be quickly updated once new data becomes available. When the reliability function has been learned, the RUL could be predicted according to Equation (8). The prediction error Er t at each time step t is designed as:…”

“…Remanufacturing is a sustainability option of the material circular economy [8]. Compared to traditional strategies in the CE, such as recycling, reuse and refurbishment, remanufacturing is an advanced solution.…”