Turning challenges into opportunities when adopting remanufacturing by original equipment manufacturers

The recent trend towards sustainable production and consumption contributes to the development of the remanufacturing industry worldwide. Despite the growing number of independent remanufacturers, remanufacturing is practiced by a limited number of European original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). There is a gap in OEM knowledge on remanufacturing as well as a lack of successful cases of OEMs adopting remanufacturing. Yet, the remanufacturing research focuses on why instead of how to adopt remanufacturing. As a result, many OEMs willing to adopt remanufacturing find themselves lost in numerous challenges. The aim of this paper is to identify OEM challenges when adopting remanufacturing and develop recommendations on how to turn challenges into opportunities. To achieve this aim, we utilize literature review and case study research methodologies. In the literature, we identified 12 clusters of challenges on OEM micro- and meso-levels and verified those at eight case companies. We then outlined the recommendations for OEMs on how to turn challenges into opportunities.