Modelling of the remanufacturing process from a sustainable perspective

Abstract

Implementation of the sustainable policy guidelines at a company level is not an easy task. The decisions about resource allocation, changes in process organization or new investments should be considered taking into account their economic, environmental and social effects. Remanufacturing processes contributes to the fulfilment of the circular economy paradigm. The existing body of literature highlights mainly remanufacturing advantages in a comparison to primary production and other recovery options, like for example, recycling. Studies on the sustainability assessment of remanufacturing process however are rather limited. The aim of this paper is to present an approach for remanufacturing process modelling with regard to sustainability aspects. The remanufacturing process modelling and control is more complex than in the primary manufacturing process. The challenges result from the process flow organization. This is due to the fact that the flow of materials is dispersed after the disassembly operations and then it is joined together in dispatching operations before the reassembly. As a result the analysis and improvement of the remanufacturing process flow is a very difficult task. Authors in this paper discuss the theoretical background of this research and propose the remanufacturing process model which takes into consideration a sustainable perspective. They present an example of model application.