Remanufacturing and the Circular Economy

Within the Circular Economy value recovery cycles, products can be REused, REpaired, REnovated, REmanufactured or REcycled.

The Circular Economy model applied to Remanufacturing aims to reuse end-of-life products and components as resources, for making good as new, or upgraded products.

Remanufacturing is a well-defined industrial process.

The industrial process consists of restoring a worn-out component or product (broken, at end-of-life, obsolete or waste), to a product with equal or higher performance, quality and warranty as a new product.

The Circular Economy is strongly supported by the European Commission, who frequently proposes Project Calls on this topic.

Unlike the recycling process which recovers only a portion of the materials and embedded energy from a product, Remanufacturing bypasses much of the industrial phases of new product development and production - by recovering a majority of the formed/machined materials, embedded energy, and knowledge and experience that is already integrated in the product! (recaptured in a new life cycle)

Making a new product requires high consumption of materials and energy, most of which, are not embedded in the final product itself – like industrial consumables (oil, heating, electricity, water…), and infrastructure, (software development, and transport for example).  These consumed elements cannot be recovered in any of the Circular Economy loops.

The remanufacturing process requires much less consumption than generating a new product.  It avoids a significant use of virgin materials, a reduction in energy and information that is needed for development iterations and manufacturing of a new product.