Everyone who is alive today has lived through the era of disposable products. In 1903, K.C. Gillette launched the first razor with a disposable blade. Although it was common to regard packaging items such as bottles and corks as disposable, Gillette's invention gave us a business model in which the consumer would repeatedly buy supplies of manufactured items, and subsequently throw them away.
A hundred or so years later, the need to reduce energy usage is making people question whether it is ‘sustainable’ to dispose of items and replace them with new ones. Our grandparents who lived through wars, and those who still live with limited resources, would see it as a terrible waste to throw away a pair of shoes or a refrigerator simply to switch to a new product in a different colour.
Manufacturers have always tried to limit and reduce their consumption of materials within the factory, but at the same time they want to maximise the customer's consumption of products, through the continual improvement and updating that encourages the customer to change to the latest model. Now, to conserve materials and energy from a global perspective – which customers and regulators increasingly demand – we need ways to re-use the products that have already been created.
A product that is regarded as at the end of its life may only have reached the end of its current owner's attachment to it. The product itself might continue to have a useful existence according to what happens next. When a product is regarded as obsolete, it has probably been replaced by a technology of a higher standard. In this case, it may be possible to remanufacture the product, bringing it up to the standard of the current latest model. This is often the case with industrial equipment where functions are more important than aspects such as appearance. A similar activity can be used to replace worn parts and return the product to use, with the same or a different user. Where a product is regarded as out of fashion by its current owner, it may be possible to pass the product to a different user, perhaps in a region where function is more important than appearance, such as the international trade in mobile phones. If an owner no longer has the need for a certain item and sees it as redundant, it may be possible to sell it to another user. If a product is broken, it may be possible to repair it, or perhaps to salvage the majority of the parts for repairing others. As last resort, products can be destroyed so that the material can be used again, but it seems perverse to melt glass bottles to reclaim the material to make bottles.
These activities present many challenges to operations managers – in fact, new types of operations. In some cases products will need to be disassembled and diagnosed, in others standard checks might suffice, and in others it may be sufficient simply to count the items. Questions of how to collect used items, or in what quantity, and where to store them arise. And should we work at the level of the product (as sold to the customer) or should we work at the level of major subassemblies that can be stored, tested and re-used? Should manufacturers deal with their own used items, or will new companies appear that will compete with them? What value should be placed on these stocks of products and components, when the only common factor is that they are all unwanted?
Production Planning & Control welcomes papers looking at all aspects of the challenges to operations managers raised by the choice to re-use existing products rather than throw them away. Papers describing case studies and drawing transferable messages from the experiences are always useful, as are those papers that help establish the specific questions that researchers should address. The most competitive manufacturers have always reduced waste within their operations – and there will be new competition and new business opportunities arising from reducing waste in the whole life-cycle of product use.