Analysis of issues relating to remanufacturing technology – a case of an Indian company

Abstract

Remanufacturing is an attractive business option involving the process of value recovery and reuse of used products. Even though it has been accepted by the Western world, India is yet to take it up as an organised industrial sector. An attempt is made to study the various techno-managerial activities of an Indian photocopier remanufacturer. This paper includes critical examination of relevant issues in managing the remanufacturing process with the help of Interpretive Structural Model (ISM) methodology and discussion on the case study subsequently leads to some meaningful conclusions. It is found that the key drivers for this remanufacturing business are the issues relating to user's environment (source of returns) and marketing of remanufactured products. There seems to exist two most important factors, which are activating all other managerial issues. Interestingly, product design issues do not activate other issues, which may be explained by the fact that the company itself is managing remanufacturing of its own products. However, experience shows that in most of the reported cases of remanufacturing, factors related to product design play very important role and trigger activation of other issues.

Keywords:

• remanufacturing
• photocopier
• interpretive structural model

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their valuable suggestions and comments in improving the structure and content of the paper.