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Decision-making for remanufacturing is more complicated than that of traditional manufacturing because used or new components can be selected to remanufacture products. It becomes difficult to determine the various options of the components and their subsequent effect on the options at the same time. In fact, all decisions made in one remanufacturing activity will have a direct impact on the decisions taken in subsequent activities and this will affect profitability. Therefore, a decision-making model is proposed to support businesses in each remanufacturing activity by using mixed-integer linear programming to maximise profit and minimise operational time. It remains unknown whether component commonality always benefits remanufacturing. Therefore, this research contributes to the literature by quantifying and controlling the impact of component commonality on the objectives under different reworking scenarios characterised by the percentage of reworked components, reworking time, and reworking cost. When reworking costs and the percentage of reworked components are higher, the effect of component commonality on profit fluctuation increases. The remanufacturer can control these situations by reducing reworking costs, selecting specific patterns of component commonality that generate high profits or choosing the appropriate percentage of reworked components depending on various scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of remanufacturing has been increasing since stricter regulations on protecting the environment were enforced. Remanufacturing is considered as the main means of retaining value from used products and components in order to drive a circular economy. However, it is more complex than traditional manufacturing due to the uncertainties associated with the quality, quantities and return timing of used products and components. Over the past few years, various methods of optimising remanufacturing outcomes have been developed to make decisions such as identifying the best End-Of-Life (EOL) options, acquiring the right amounts of cores, deciding the most suitable disassembly level, applying suitable cleaning techniques, and considering product commonality across different product families. A decision being made at one remanufacturing activity will greatly affect the decisions at subsequent activities, which will affect remanufacturing outcomes, i.e. productivity, economic performance effectiveness, and the proportion of core that can be salvaged. Therefore, a holistic way of integrating different decisions over multiple remanufacturing activities is needed to improve remanufacturing outcomes, which is a major knowledge gap. This paper reviews current remanufacturing practice in order to highlight both the challenges and opportunities, and more importantly, offers useful insights on how such a knowledge gap can be bridged. • Integrated decision making (IDM) over multiple remanufacturing activities is a gap. • Models considering economic, engineering and environmental objectives are lacking. • Metaheuristics and non-linear programming are recommended optimising methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]