Environmental benefits of remanufacturing mechanical products: a harmonized meta-analysis of comparative life cycle assessment studies.

Remanufactured mechanical products with high-added value are generally claimed to gain environmental benefits. These claims were made based on different products and assessment methodologies. The variability of life cycle assessment (LCA) results precludes a meaningful comparison across products and studies. This paper aims to critically and systematically evaluate the lifecycle environmental performance of remanufactured products compared with their new counterparts and to identify the key factors, strengths, and limitations in the assessment procedure. Faced with the noteworthy variations, we closely examined and harmonized the unit function, allocation approach, system boundary, impact assessment method, and the underlying assumptions in screened 20 papers regarding 11 types of products. The environmental indicators adopted in this study were global warming potential (GWP) and primary energy consumption (PEC). In terms of these two indicators, the environmental burdens of remanufactured products relative to newly manufactured alternatives were harmonized to the comparison ratios. With these harmonized samples, descriptive statistics were calculated using Monte Carlo Simulation to disclose the variations of comparison results and identify the general tendency. Results of this meta-study showed that remanufacturing could contribute to over 50% reduction for GWP when usage and end-of-life stages were excluded from the life cycle. The GWP and PEC of remanufactured mechanical products account for 28.5% and 25.9% of the new counterparts, respectively, on average. This meta-analysis of comparative LCAs on new and remanufactured products would advance the understanding of the environmental advantages of remanufacturing.

An energy and time prediction model for remanufacturing process using graphical evaluation and review technique (GERT) with multivariant uncertainties.

The rising energy price and stringent energy efficiency-related legislations encourage decision makers to concern more about energy efficiency in current manufacturing competition. In this regard, a quick and accurate prediction of the energy consumption and makespan in the manufacturing process has been a prerequisite for energy optimization. Given the various types of uncertainties in the remanufacturing system such as stochastic, fuzzy, and grey factors, the present study developed a prediction model that forecasts the energy consumption, completion time, and probability of processing routes. It adopted the graphical evaluation and review technique (GERT) to convert remanufacturing process into an uncertain network, considering multivariant uncertainties instead of merely stochastic uncertainty in prior works. We provided a generic seven steps to implement this approach. The energy consumption and completion time of remanufacturing process were determined in conjunction with Mason's rule and chance-constrained programming. Connecting rod reprocessing was presented as a numerical example. Based on the GERT network, we conducted an Arena simulation to validate the feasibility and effectiveness of this approach. In addition, we adopted the concept of criticality index to conduct sensitivity analysis and examine the predominant factors affecting the concerned indicators. This study would enable remanufacturers to perform a quick prediction of energy use and makespan in remanufacturing process.