Improving Design for Remanufacturing Though Feedback from Remanufacturing to Design

Abstract

The high demand for products in our society makes manufacturing, and the treatment of products throughout the product life cycle, crucial as it adds to the total environmental impact of a product. Initiatives such as the circular economy promote economic growth while not increasing environmental impacts. The circular economy can also be viewed as a system where the use, maintenance, reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling of materials are optimised to capture the embedded value of products. This doctoral thesis focuses on remanufacturing in particular as an environmentally preferred way to treat products that have reached their end of use. Remanufacturing is an industrial process whereby a used product is restored to its next full life cycle, and thus energy and materials can be saved compared to new production. A product that is intended for remanufacturing ought to have certain qualities such as ease of cleaning, ease of separation, and ease of reassembly in order to achieve efficient product remanufacturing. By applying design for remanufacturing (DfRem), costs can be saved as the remanufacturing operation time is reduced. Further, integrating DfRem in the design process is essential in order to achieve a more efficient and effective remanufacturing process. However, the current status in industry is that DfRem is not widely applied, and thus, products are not designed to facilitate remanufacturing. Since DfRem requires knowledge about remanufacturing, feedback from remanufacturing to design is needed for making the correct design considerations. The aim of this doctoral thesis is to expand current knowledge on feedback from remanufacturing to design and how it can be used to improve DfRem. Hence, in order to meet the aim of this thesis, both literature studies and multiple case studies were conducted. The case studies include three companies that design, manufacture, and remanufacture their products. The data collection within the case studies was predominantly conducted through semi-structured interviews. The results from the case studies have been further explored in a cross-case analysis. The literature studies show the potential feedback from remanufacturing to design can be divided into three main categories: from the remanufacturing personnel, related to the process of remanufacturing, or related to the core to be remanufactured. Further, potential feedback at the case companies was found. However, currently, the potential feedback remains unsought for at the case companies. Indeed, there are barriers for feedback from remanufacturing to design,