Remanufacturing of short life-cycle products

Rapid development and innovation in science and technology have resulted in shorter product life cycle, especially in technology-based commodities like mobile phones and computers. Mounting wastes from such products have received increasing attentions from government, society, as well as industries, and it has created global sustainability concerns. Numerous studies on remanufacturing have been found on automotive sector and durable goods, but only a few studies focusing on short life-cycle products. Even though several studies implied that successful remanufacturing requires products to have long useful life and stable technology, there are several findings that support remanufacturing of short life cycle products. It is our intention to investigate the potential of remanufacturing a short life cycle product. A literature review is conducted to study the pros and cons, life-cycle implication, and remanufacturing aspects of short life cycle products. Then we conduct a survey to obtain descriptive analysis about the market of remanufactured short life cycle products. The factors investigated are market potential, customers’ willingness to pay (WTP), and comparison between remanufactured and reuse products. The surveys results show that remanufactured product’s market segment is low-end customers with highest preference toward remanufacturing and 95 of them chose remanufactured product when the price is less than 40 of new product. However, business to business (B2B) returns and consumer returns are best remanufactured and sold at primary market as identical to the new product. We conclude the discussion by proposing a framework for short life-cycle product remanufacturing, which can be used as a guideline to decide and plan the remanufacturing system