The promotion and application of green remanufacturing: a case study in a machine tool plant

Low parts utilization, high resource consumption, and low profit margins have become the main factors hindering the development of machine tool remanufacturing in China. A machine tool manufacturing company was taken as a case to investigate the improvement of the remanufacturing production line. The remanufacturing workshop and production line of the case enterprise have been completely re-planned, adding remaining life assessment, additive manufacturing, quality monitoring, and reassembly quality control. After applying the new production line, the energy consumption and water consumption of each remanufacturing machine tool were reduced by 29.87 kgce and 0.042 m(3), respectively, and the pollutants generated were reduced by 4.352 kg. With the increase in remanufactured machine tool capacity, the part reutilization has increased by 26.9%. Despite satisfactory results, machine remanufacturing still faces many difficulties in China. Combined with case enterprises, the current situation of machine tool remanufacturing in China was discussed, and several suggestions for promoting remanufacturing in Chinese manufacturing companies were put forward.