A business process model of inspection in remanufacturing

Mark Errington Stephen J Childe A crucial stage of the remanufacturing process is the inspection procedure. Surveys carried out in the automotive remanufacturing sector show that the industry is concerned about the need this causes for a large amount of specialist skills. Despite this, there has been little research into what is actually involved in the inspection process and its outcomes. This paper presents case-based research that was carried out on the inspection procedures of both electronic and mechanical product remanufacturers. It presents generic inspection process diagrams, produced using case studies in UK companies engaged in remanufacturing activities. The models provide a greater understanding of the remanufacturing inspection procedures currently used. The models were tested with additional case studies. The paper discusses the questions raised by the improved understanding of inspection processes in remanufacturing for operations managers and outlines some questions for future research. - Background Early results of this research were described in [1]. Due to global warming, the Climate Change Act [2] and the imminent peaking of world oil production (as described in [3] and [4]), closer attention is being paid to the impact of manufacturing and its energy consumption on the environment. There is now an increasing amount of legislation being developed by the European Union aimed at reducing energy use as well as our impact on the environment. As more and more countries join the European Union, more manufacturers will be required to comply with this legislation. This includes the so-called producer responsibility legislation including the WEEE directive [5], End of Life Vehicles Act [6], Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive [7] and the Batteries and Accumulators Directive [8]. This legislation requires the producers of certain products to be responsible for their disposal at end of life. Producers are not only responsible for retrieving the used products from their end users but are also responsible for recycling them whilst meeting certain minimum recycling rates. With limited room remaining in landfill sites, material recycling is often preferable to land filling; however, most of the value added during manufacture and the energy embodied in the product is lost. In order to take back post-consumer products, it is necessary to create a reverse supply chain. In cases when this is integrated into forward manufacture, in such a way that old products are used to produce new, at any level, this leads to a closed-loop supply chain [9]. Many consumer products are still working at their end of life, and there are an increasing number of companies that collect these products and return them to market both in the UK and abroad. They provide a cheap alternative to buying new products and appear to have been very successful both in not-for-profit and for-profit organisations. Other products reach their end of life because of an accumulation of rectifiable faults, the wearing of a small number of components within a product or sometimes because of their age or amount of use. It has been shown that there has been a long tradition of remanufacturing in the auto parts industry [10]. Manufacturers in other industries such as Hewlett Packard [11], Oc [12] and Xerox [13] have started to take advantage of this way of doing business and have started to run large remanufacturing operations. It is often stated that remanufacturing is 80% more energy efficient and 60% more cost efficient than traditional manufacturing. For this reason, a large amount of attention is being paid to these types of processes by old and emerging economies alike. Many tools now exist which can be used to evaluate the environmental and financial performance of a given product against set criteria [14-17]. The aim of these tools is to identify areas of the design that could be changed in order to enable end of life strategies to be carried out more efficiently. There has also been a large amount of research carried out on operations management within the remanufacturing process itself. Guide et al present an analysis of the performance of different static priority rules [18], while in an earlier paper, describe the application of Goldratt's drum-buffer-rope system in a remanufacturing environment [19,20]. Other authors look at the use of production planning approaches in remanufacturing environments [21-31]. Reverse logistics channels themselves have also attracted a large amount of interest. Jayaraman et al. present a deterministic integer programming model which can be used to determine the optimum location for remanufacturing facilities and collection centres [9]. A similar optimisation study has been carried out by Peng ZY and Zhong [32]. Blackburn et al. discuss the need for different reverse supply chains for different models [33]. They find that depreciation rates among high-value items mean that responsive supply chains are more appropriate in some cases. There are also some studies that look at strategies for increasing the number of cores (end-of-life items) available for remanufacture. Ray et al. present a method for determining the correct buy-back pricing strategy for used products from consumers [34]. Xiaochen et al. present a method for calculating the optimum buy-back price under certain conditions [35]. Inspection and disposition decisions Inspection and disposition is one of the five main parts of a remanufacturing business [36]. Despite this, research has tended to focus largely around product design for remanufacture rather than upon the operational questions related to how a specific product is actually inspected and remanufactured. Steinhilper [37] identifies that: (A) step of great importance in remanufacturing is to assess the condition of the disassembled and cleaned parts as to their reusability or reconditionability. He goes on to state that this is done in two parts: to define the objective criteria and accepted condition characteristics and to determine how this will be assessed. Guide and Van Wassenhove [36] describe the inspection and disposition process as follows: The testing, sorting and grading of returned products are labour-intensive and time-consuming tasks, but the process can be streamlined if a company subjects the returns to quality standards and uses sensors, bar codes and other technologies to automate tracking and testing. There are many signs that the technology that is referred to in this text is beginning to be more widely used. Bosch have carried out tests with micro sensors to record data during the life of its power tool motors [38]. Their plan was to connect the tools to a data reader once they have been returned to them in order to decide whether the motors can be reused or not. At the time, similar technology was being developed as part of the Care Vision 2000 initiative to produce what they call a Green Port [39]. Technology to (...truncated)