Article At A Glance
- Remanufacturing reduces overall waste and inefficiency across the automotive industry.
- Remanufacturing provides economic and competitive benefits and promotes sustainability.
- Remanufacturing, like affordable electric vehicles and infrastructure, will be integral to green mobility.
Many think automotive remanufacturing is relatively new, but large-scale remanufacturing has existed since at least the 1940s. Then, the war effort’s resulting resource strain necessitated manufacturers reusing car and truck parts. And today, automotive remanufacturing is already a $65 billion market!
Are remanufactured engines good enough? If they weren’t, would remanufacturers set the stage for a sustainable and eco-friendly remanufacturing paradigm shift in the automotive industry? Here’s what you need to know.
The Evolution of Remanufacturing in the Automotive Sector
Remanufacturing is vital in the automotive industry due to the excessive waste that automotive production potentially creates. Cars have numerous hardware components that break and leave behind metallic and chemical waste. Certain materials, like old car batteries, can also be health and environmental hazards without proper disposal methods.
Additional Read: How High Voltage Batteries Are Enabling Electrification In New Markets
So, remanufacturing offers an excellent solution. For one thing, it reduces overall waste and inefficiency across the automotive industry. A remanufacturing process will take old auto parts, remanufacture them into useful components again, or repurpose the materials to different ends.
In the past, remanufacturing arose due to resource scarcity. This commendable approach sets the stage for the green transition in the automotive industry and elsewhere.
Economic and Competitive Advantages of Remanufacturing
Aside from reducing waste, remanufacturing provides economic and competitive benefits to various businesses. For example, businesses can reduce their costs by extending the usable lifespan of materials or reducing the total amount of waste they pay others to dispose of. Remanufacturing is cheaper than buying, freeing up funds for capital improvements or market expansion.
Remanufacturing is successful under the following two conditions:
- When remanufacturing avoids certain production costs compared to creating a new product.
- When remanufactured products have a marketable value comparable to new products.
If these two conditions hold, remanufacturing facilitates low-cost, waste-friendly supply chains. They can undercut traditional businesses by reducing costs and minimizing raw materials.
How Remanufacturing is Reducing Carbon Emission and Promoting Sustainability
Essentially, remanufacturing something recycled materials that would otherwise have gone to a landfill somewhere. But is remanufacturing good for the environment in all aspects of the process? One of the most important parts of sustainable and eco-friendly remanufacturing is that it extends the lifespan of usable assets to reduce the footprint of the materials.
In many industries, extracting natural resources for industrial manufacturing heavily affects the environment. When eco-conscious businesses remanufacture and repurpose their assets or source remanufactured assets, they produce less waste and reduce their overall carbon footprints. That’s why, in a world battling the effects of climate change, remanufacturing takes center stage in reducing the waste and carbon emissions plaguing global supply chains.
Local remanufacturing also extends these benefits to the grassroots level, right down to greener transportation of the raw materials or products.
A Collaborative Approach to Green Innovation
The switch to green manufacturing isn’t something remanufacturing firms can accomplish independently. There needs to be a keen focus on remanufacturing uses, including ways to design products sensitive to the environmental impacts at each lifespan stage. Without suppliers and manufacturers planning, progress will be slow.
With automotive remanufacturing, much collaboration has come from the private aftermarket and OEM replacement market. These collaborative partnerships will be essential if all players want to foster a sustainable market for sourcing automotive parts from remanufacturers.
Some Challenges Within the Remanufacturing Industry
Are remanufactured engines good options for every type of machine or vehicle? Below are some of the most pressing challenges the remanufacturing industry faces.
Designs
Manufacturers engineer products for a specific lifecycle, from initial creation to waste and disposal. Changing the approach requires changing these designs. Ideally, manufacturers should create designs that lend themselves well to remanufacturing using recyclable materials.
To that end, modular designs built to allow disassembly and reassembly could be a core consideration for current manufacturers. The designs should only account for second-life repurposing after remanufacturing. However, they should also stand against planned obsolescence.
Commitment
Despite its long history, many think that remanufacturing is a fad. Can manufacturers convince executives and leadership committees about the importance of placing remanufacturing at the core of design efforts? If a remanufacturing philosophy is at the core of company operations, they must.
The process may start with demonstrating the value remanufacturing can add, such as expanding product categories and curbing costs.
Marketing
In addition to convincing business leaders to make a change, marketing remanufactured automotive parts relies on updating consumer perceptions or confidence. Consumers may hesitate to purchase remanufactured parts due to concerns about quality and longevity. That may change once people see how remanufactured products can meet their needs at a more affordable price.
With automotive manufacturing, modern electronic and computing components can be difficult to remanufacture to an acceptable standard. However, technology evolves quickly and will continue to make improvements. Vehicle owners are already starting to see the practicality of remanufacturing as new models replace old ones, and they need help finding the replacement car parts they need.
Navigating the Future: Remanufacturing’s Role in Shaping Green Mobility
Will sustainable and eco-friendly remanufacturing play a role in shaping the future of green mobility? Absolutely. In particular, remanufacturing for electric vehicles lowers the entry into the market, a necessity if consumers make a large-scale shift to EVs.
More broadly, remanufacturing will shape virtually all aspects of green infrastructure in the coming years. Change takes time to implement, and the perceived cost is still one of the stumbling blocks to a more environmentally friendly automotive industry. However, remanufacturing offers consumers and businesses an economically viable, sustainable approach.
Leading Remanufacturer in Illinois
For nearly 70 years, Dynamic Manufacturing has been a pioneer in the remanufacturing industry. As a family-owned and operated company, we thrive on building lasting customer relationships and meeting their remanufacturing and machining needs.
Sustainable and eco-friendly remanufacturing is here to stay. Connect with Dynamic Manufacturing online or call (708) 343-8753 today to speak to a company representative in Hillside, Illinois.
