Concept for Maturity Assessment of Remanufacturing Ability in Production Process Development

Growing demand of consumer goods increases industrial production, which poses immense challenges towards resource management. Due to the finite nature of material resources used for production, their future availability is not assured and companies face higher material costs. Manufacturing companies with linear economic value-creation encounter difficulties in coping with increased material scarcity, prices and environmental regulations. A solution to these challenges is the circular economy, in which product life cycles are extended through multiple uses in various circulation strategies. One of the most resource-efficient circular strategies is remanufacturing, where components or products are reconditioned into an as-new or even improved condition and thereby reducing material resources and energy. Despite these advantages, manual time- and cost-intensive process steps in practice characterize current remanufacturing processes. This insufficient industrialization currently inhibits economic remanufacturing. One root cause for insufficient industrialization is that remanufacturing is currently not considered in product and production process development. Some approaches for including remanufacturing requirements in product development are referred as Design for Remanufacturing (DfRem). Corresponding guidance for considering remanufacturing requirements in production process development is missing. In this paper, a maturity assessment of remanufacturing capability in production process development is developed. Initially, a literature research is conducted to identify requirements for remanufacturing process steps that need to be addressed in production process development. Subsequently, the identified requirements are transferred into action areas concerning the remanufacturing process. These action areas are subdivided into action elements for a detailed description and subdivision regarding the principles of industrialization. Last maturity levels are derived for each element, which describe the degree of industrialization, and summarized in a maturity assessment. Regarding the realization of economic remanufacturing, the maturity assessment serves to create a holistic development concept and measures the remanufacturing capability of the developed production process.