Design, management and control of demanufacturing and remanufacturing systems

In the recent years, increasing attention has been posed towards enhancing the sustainability of manufacturing processes by reducing the consumption of resources and key materials, the energy consumption and the environmental footprint, while also increasing companies’ competitiveness in global market contexts. De- and remanufacturing includes the set of technologies/systems, tools and knowledge-based methods to recover and reuse functions and materials from industrial waste and post-consumer products, under a Circular Economy perspective. This new paradigm can potentially support the sustainability challenges in strategic manufacturing sectors, such as aeronautics, automotive, electronics, consumer goods, and mechatronics. A new generation of smart de- and remanufacturing systems showing higher levels of automation, flexibility and adaptability to changing material mixtures and values is emerging and there is a need for systematizing the existing approaches to support their operations. Such innovative de- and remanufacturing system design, management and control approaches as well as advanced technological enablers have a key role to support the Circular Economy paradigm. This paper revises system level problems, methods and tools to support this paradigm and highlights the main challenges and opportunities towards a new generation of advanced de- and remanufacturing systems.