Industrialization of Remanufacturing in the Highly Iterative Product and Production Process Development (HIP³D)

In view of the increasing scarcity of resources and global efforts to reduce CO₂ emissions, production management approaches are focusing on enabling a circular economy. The remanufacturing of used products to the quality standards of a new product is one key enabler. Remanufacturing offers economic and ecologic advantages by reducing the amount of resources used in production. Thus, associated manufacturing costs are reduced and the dependence on imports of critical raw materials decreases. To do so, remanufacturing requirements must be considered in the early development phases of products and production processes. In practice, companies focus on the economic perspective in the development phase, methodically supported by highly iterative product and production process development (HIP³D) approaches. However manufacturing companies neglect the inclusion of the ecological perspective in the development phases, partly due to missing methodical support. This paper presents a framework for the industrialization of remanufacturing in the HIP³D. Since the feasibility of remanufacturing is defined at the early stages of product and production process development, this paper aims at integrating remanufacturing requirements in the development phase. First, the requirements arising from remanufacturing are identified through a systematic literature review. Subsequently, it is examined to what extent HIP³D already covers these requirements. For non-fulfilled remanufacturing requirements, adaptions and extensions to the HIP³D approach are derived and described in design guidelines. This results in a framework for the industrialization of remanufacturing in the HIP³D, enabling manufacturing companies to exploit their economic and ecological potential.