Remanufacturing: Trends and Issues

The twenty-first century is a knowledge-based and increasingly environmental age. Many countries are introducing new policies and production concepts that are consistent with these trends. Recently, interest in recycle, reuse and remanufacturing technologies has been increasing, with the eco-friendly and energy-efficient production. One of these eco-friendly production methods, remanufacturing, is defined as a series of processes to re-commercialize end-of-life products and parts as new products. Various remanufacturing markets already exist throughout the world. However, the size and types of remanufacturing markets differ from country to country according to technological level and national policy. In this paper, a literature review of trends and issues related to the remanufacturing from the last five years was performed. Then, the global remanufacturing landscape, including the types of remanufactured goods, the scale of the markets and national policies in the major remanufacturing countries was summarized. Also, approaches in the design of disassembly and several remanufacturing technologies, including cleaning and repairing, are provided from the last three years.