Remanufacturing and Refurbishment: An Industrial Process for Used Products

What is Remanufacturing and its Place in the Circular Economy?

The Assessment Task

Remanufacturing and refurbishment is the industrial process whereby used products referred to as ‘cores’ are restored. It is a process of recapturing the value added to the material when a product was first manufactured. The process can be performed on either entire products or the parts that constitute the product.

Remanufacturing is often cited as a key component of the move to a Circular Economy.

Whilst developed countries, such as the USA, are quite advanced in their remanufacturing journey, developing countries have many more challenges to overcome before remanufacturing is widely available as an alternative to purchasing new items.

Deliverables

a)Define the concept of Remanufacturing and indicate its place in the circular economy (15% of word count)

b)Profile a company that you believe exemplifies the best of remanufacturing practice. For your chosen company, detail

1.Who they are

2.Their main remanufactured products and services

3.Who their customers are

4.The benefits of purchasing remanufactured products

c)Provide a summary of the findings of the 2016 study by the European Remanufacturing Network into Business Models used in the Remanufacturing industry. Identify the models relevant to your chosen company. (20% of word count)

d)Provide a summary of the findings of the recent study by Cao et al (2020) into the remanufacturing industry in China (20% of word count)

e)Compare and contrast the European and Chinese remanufacturing markets, including any perspectives that have emerged since the documents above were written. (25% of word count)

f)For the company selected in (b) above, give your analysis of the barriers to success in the Chinese market (10% of word count)

Graphical methods will be very effective at conveying some elements of these deliverables. Submissions that are solely comprised of text are unlikely to score highly.

The maximum permitted word count for this assignment is 2000 words. Tables, figures, references and appendices are excluded from this word count.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this assessment, you will be able to:

b.Distinguish between key supply chain concepts and techniques and apply appropriate ones for controlling and planning cross functional operations.

c.Evaluate and synthesise the various definitions of quality in an operational context and identify opportunities for quality improvement.

d.Analyse the purpose and value of operations management within the supply chain context 

Your grade will depend on the extent to which you meet these learning outcomes in the way relevant for this assessment. Please see the grading rubric on NILE for further details of the criteria against which you will be assessed.

Assessment Support

Specific support sessions for this assessment will be provided by the module team and notified through NILE. You can also access individual support and guidance for your assessments from Library and Learning Services.  Visit the Skills Hub to access this support and to discover the online support also available for assessments and academic skills.

Academic Integrity and Misconduct

Unless this is a group assessment, the work you produce must be your own, with work taken from any other source properly referenced and attributed. For the avoidance of doubt this means that it is an infringement of academic integrity and, therefore, academic misconduct to ask someone else to carry out all or some of the work for you, whether paid or unpaid, or to use the work of another student whether current or previously submitted.

For further guidance on what constitutes plagiarism, contract cheating or collusion, or any other infringement of academic integrity, please read the University’s Academic Integrity and Misconduct Policy.  Also useful resources to help with understanding academic integrity are available from UNPAC .

The penalties for academic misconduct are severe and can include failing the assessment, failing the module and expulsion from the university.

Assessment Submission

To submit your work, please go to the ‘Submit your work’ area on the NILE site and use the relevant submission point to upload your report. The deadline for this is 11.59pm (UK local time) on the date of submission. Please note that essays and text based reports should be submitted as word documents and not PDFs or Mac files.

Written work submitted to TURNITIN will be subject to anti-plagiarism detection software.  Turnitin checks student work for possible textual matches against internet available resources and its own proprietary database. Work

When you upload your work correctly to TURNITIN you will receive a receipt which is your record and proof of submission.  If your assessment is not submitted to TURNITIN, rather than a receipt, you will see a green banner at the top of the screen that denotes successful submission.

N.B Work emailed directly to your tutor will not be marked.

Late submission of work

For first sits, if an item of assessment is submitted late and an extension has not been granted, the following will apply:

• Within one week of the original deadline – work will be marked and returned with full feedback, and awarded a maximum bare pass grade.
• More than one week from original deadline – grade achievable LG (L indicating late).

For resits there are no allowances for work submitted late and it will be treated as a non-submission.