How will you know when a customer is
finished with a product?
What will the condition of the product be at
the end of life?
Will the product be changed? Altered?
Customized? Not worth returning?
Timing of product
returns
Random nature of returns means
you cannot know when a customer
will finish with a product
Few customers will send a product back
straight away so remanufacture strategy
cannot start at day 1
If a product is redesigned in any way, the
stock (collected or with customers) is
rendered useless and cannot be
remanufactured.
You might get a lot of product back late in
the product life cycle ad no longer have a
market for remanufacture, even if the
products are as good as new
Economics of
product returns
Cost of returning the products back to a
remanufacture facility. Who pays?
What portion of products will
be lost and not recovered
Rival company could collect the
products and remanufacture them
Is the business division that supplies
new products your biggest competitor
Legal issues
Is the end of life
product hazardous?
Is it legal to transfer 'waste' by post?
In every country you want to
collect/remanufacture from?
Advantages
Recovers a substantial proportion of the
resources embodied in the used product
Diverts waste streams from just being reclaimed as material (or
landfill) by evaluating their potential to serve again
Reduces the cost of susbsequent products
Reduce dependency on raw material supply
Sustain the economy 'consumer nation'
Reduce energy bills
Reduce carbon emissions
Can be cost competitive
Marketing- differenet to other rivals
Collect product failure data
Overcoming problems
Focus the consumables
with quick turnaround and
repeat business
Integrate remanufacture and
recycling to make use of surplus
Control product returns through
incentives and collection schemes
Retain product ownership to ensure
products return at the right time
Focus the integral components that don't need
to change for styling reasons