5‐step approach for initiating remanufacturing (5AFIR)

Abstract Despite remanufacturing being a value‐retention process capable of bringing both economic and environmental benefits to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), the remanufacturing market is small, and the OEM share on the market is even smaller. There are trends in OEMs hesitating to initiate remanufacturing due to the lack of knowledge or often unjustified assumptions about how remanufacturing affects their business‐as‐usual. To further motivate OEMs to initiate remanufacturing, there is a need to extend the remanufacturing initiation theory to showcase how remanufacturing could be initiated in practice. Therefore, this paper aims to describe a remanufacturing initiation and demonstrate the initiation steps for OEMs by developing a remanufacturing initiation framework. The framework is developed based on a remanufacturing initiation led by an OEM of robotic lawn mowers. Based on the case study, a 5‐step approach for initiating remanufacturing (5AFIR) framework—the remanufacturing sapphire —was developed to interpret and visualise the remanufacturing approach taken at the studied OEM. The framework steps consist of the following: (1) Select a product family, (2) involve actors prone to be impacted by remanufacturing, (3) iteratively identify prerequisites and assess the system performance, (4) develop a plan and industrialise remanufacturing, and (5) refine and validate the assessment in Step 3.