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To provide in‐depth insights into one specific product recovery operation (remanufacturing) in the automotive sector, taking the example of original equipment manufacturers (OEM).

The research was undertaken within the engine remanufacturing facilities of a major European car manufacturer. The main data collection methods were open‐ended, non‐directive interviews and process observation. In addition, secondary data (internal company reports and documentation) were collected. Overall, a total of 64 interviews were conducted within the engine remanufacturing plant.

The case study revealed that the remanufacturing processes included challenges that have been traditionally investigated within “conventional” operations and supply chain management, such as high inventory levels or process through‐put times. It was also found that product take‐back and recovery in the automotive sector do not necessarily stem from a company's mission statement that includes (sustainable) responsibility, but are based on other motives. These motivations include the long‐term supply of spare parts, for example.

The findings are limited to one specific European car manufacturer and may therefore not necessarily apply to the independent automotive remanufacturing sector or to other OEM remanufacturers.

The case study gives an in‐depth insight into the issues within automotive product take‐back and recovery, the types of obstacles that may occur as well as how these may be overcome in the real world.

The findings provide new, real‐world insights for academia, but also feedback to industry by providing an in‐depth account of current automotive remanufacturing practices undertaken by the OEM.

Re-use of products in the supply chain has become a significant consideration in the last decade. It has resulted in the development of several product recovery alternatives. Remanufacturing in the supply chain is one such product recovery option that yields social, economic and environmental benefits. This study aims is to identify and evaluate the key performance indicators (KPIs) of the remanufacturing supply chain (RSC).

The KPIs of RSC are classified along with the five primary management processes (plan, source, make, deliver and return) of the supply chain operations reference (SCOR) model. A grey decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) technique is applied to investigate the complex interrelationships amongst the identified KPIs and categorize them into cause and effect group. The applicability of the proposed framework is demonstrated through a case organization involved in remanufacturing business.

The KPIs are identified based on literature analysis and subsequent discussion with decision panel experts. The present research work results reveal that “consumer awareness program”, “technological compatibility” and skilled workforce' are the most influential indicators.

This research work provides a framework to evaluate the causal relationship between the RSC KPIs. The framework proposed in this study is empirically applied to a case organization. Based on the study findings some important recommendations are presented to the decision-makers/policy planners to help them develop an action plan. This would help the case organization reduce resource consumption, increase market share and enable sustainable development.

This study reviews scholarly work in sustainable green logistics and remanufacturing (SGLR) and their subdisciplines, in combination with bibliometric, thematic and content analyses that provide a viewpoint on categorization and a future research agenda. This paper provides insight into current research trends in the subjects of interest by examining the most essential and most referenced articles promoting sustainability and climate-neutral logistics.

For the literature review, the authors extracted and sifted 2180 research and review papers for the period 2008–2023 from the Scopus database. The authors performed bibliometric and content analyses using multiple software programs such as Gephi, VOSviewer and R programming.

The SGLR papers can be grouped into seven clusters: (1) The circular economy facets; (2) Decarbonization of operations to nurture a climate-neutral business; (3) Green sustainable supply chain management; (4) Drivers and barriers of reverse logistics and the circular economy; (5) Business models for sustainable logistics and the circular economy; (6) Transportation problems in sustainable green logistics and (7) Digitalization of logistics and supply chain management.

In this review, fundamental ideas are established, research gaps are identified and multiple future research subjects are proposed. These propositions are categorized into three main research streams, i.e. (1) Digitalization of SGLR, (2) Enhancing scopes, sectors and industries in the context of SGLR and (3) Developing more efficient and effective climate-neutral and climate change-related solutions and promoting more environmental-related and sustainability research concerning SGLR. In addition, two conceptual models concerning SGLR and climate-neutral strategies are developed and presented for managers and practitioners to consider when adopting green and sustainability principles in supply chains. This review also highlights the need for academics to go beyond frameworks and build new techniques and instruments for monitoring SGLR performance in the real world.

This study provides an overview of the evolution of SGLR; it also clarifies concepts, environmental concerns and climate change practices, particularly those directed to supply chain management.

Implementing effective marketing strategies can reduce consumers' perceived risks and promote the development of the remanufacturing market. The paper aims to explore the impact of two marketing strategies on the remanufacturing decisions of an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and investigates the design of the optimal warranty service (WS) and consumer education (CE) strategies. Moreover, the authors also examine the optimal marketing strategy choices using the three criteria of OEM: profitability, consumer surplus and environmental impact (EI).

The authors develop a stylized model by game theory, which characterizes how an OEM that produces and sells both new and remanufactured products (RPs) should design the optimal remanufacturing marketing activity, and how to choose between different remanufacturing marketing strategies. Moreover, consumer's utility theory is used to describe consumers' perception of different remanufacturing marketing strategies to derive product demand.

The results reveal that increasing the warranty and education levels will not always improve the firm's profitability; the result depends heavily on the size of the functionality-oriented consumer (FOC) segment. Remanufacturing marketing strategies might harm the OEM, consumers and environment under certain conditions. Moreover, the optimal marketing strategy selections are jointly influenced by the FOC segment and the new production cost. There exist triple-win regions in which the OEM should not hesitate to perform WS and CE.

Few studies focus on the design and choice of remanufacturing marketing strategies, especially considering the role of consumer perceived behavior. This research contributes the behavioral remanufacturing marketing management and provides managerial implications for the implementation of OEM remanufacturing marketing strategy.

The purpose of this study was to research how the reassembly (remanufacturing assembly) achieves a quality that is not lower than original production with different precision remanufactured parts based on the integration of mechanics, mathematics (measurement uncertainty) and management (optional classification). Remanufactured product quality is the soul of the remanufacturing project.

First, this paper studies the recycled parts features and reassembly features. Then, we build the mathematical sub-model with remanufactured parts and dimensional precision, which is proven that optional classification can effectively improve the reassembly accuracy mathematically. The optimization model of optional classification for reassembly is proposed under the constraint of a dimensional chain, and the solutions are studied based on particle swarm optimization. Finally, this method is applied in a remanufacturing enterprise and achieves good results.

The method can reduce the cost of quality loss and improve the quality of remanufactured products.

It provides a new solution and idea for reassembly with different precision remanufactured parts and promotes the healthy development of reverse logistics with a high level of customer satisfaction. This method can maximize the use of different levels of quality remanufactured parts and improve reassembly accuracy by mathematical proofs and examples.

The purpose of this article is to investigate and analyze the interactions between economic and sustainable development elements in the context of remanufacturing in India.

To comprehend the hierarchical and contextual link among factors impacting remanufacturing in India, the study used interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) methodologies.

The integrated ISM-DEMATEL approach identifies optimal utilization of the resources as the most crucial factor influencing remanufacturing in India, followed by reducing landfills, conserving energy and low cost. The study also reveals that optimal utilization of resources, reduction of landfills, conservation of energy and incorporated advanced technology impacts most of the factors but get affected by a few factors.

Industry practitioners and policymakers should consider the remanufacturing process to achieve sustainable and economic development. The government and other stakeholders can use the ISM framework and cause-and-effect diagram to classify the impact factors and their impact on the Indian economy and environment.

This study supports the process to save the landfills and curbing pollution, conserve energy and optimize utilization of the resources, generate employment and supporting the development of the economy. Remanufacturing will undoubtedly contribute to the development of an environment and economy in India that benefits both.

ISM and DEMATELs strategy offers a tiered model and a cause-and-effect relationship between the variables affecting remanufacturing in India.

This paper examines how the level of low-carbon awareness (LCA) affects the remanufacturing strategy in a supply chain with an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and an independent remanufacturer (IR) competing with each other.

Game theory and operations optimization.

The studies analytically characterize the threshold levels of the LCA in response to which the OEM and the IR will change their remanufacturing strategies from no remanufacturing to partial remanufacturing and then to full remanufacturing. In addition, the studies reveal that as compared with the OEM, the IR has more flexibility in terms of the market entry to remanufacturing with the level of LCA increasing. With the extended studies, it is exhibited that the above findings are robust to a good extent.

It can provide decision support for remanufacturing enterprises.

The optimal control on reassembly (remanufacturing assembly) error is one of the key technologies to guarantee the assembly precision of remanufactured product. However, because of the uncertainty existing in remanufactured parts, it is difficult to control assembly error during reassembly process. Based on the state space model, this paper aims to propose the optimal control method on reassembly precision to solve this problem.

Initially, to ensure the assembly precision of a remanufactured car engine, this paper puts forward an optimal control method on assembly precision for a remanufactured car engine based on the state space model. This method takes assembly workstation operation and remanufactured part attribute as the input vector reassembly status as the state vector and assembly precision as the output vector. Then, the compensation function of reassembly workstation operation input vector is calculated to direct the optimization of the reassembly process. Finally, a case study of a certain remanufactured car engine crankshaft is constructed to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the method proposed.

The optimal control method on reassembly precision is an effective technology in improving the quality of the remanufactured crankshaft. The average qualified rate of the remanufactured crankshaft increased from 83.05 to 90.97 per cent as shown in the case study.

The optimal control method on the reassembly precision based on the state space model is available to control the assembly precision, thus enhancing the core competitiveness of the remanufacturing enterprises.

In a quest to meet increasing pressure to incorporate environmental and sustainability factors due to the legislations and growing public awareness, companies are rethinking of strategizing their supply chain network to take control of the reverse flow of products as well. This growing interest has also led to tremendous growth in publications occurring in several reputed journals in the last few years. In this context, the purpose of this article is to perform a systematic literature survey of recent and state-of-the-art papers in order to draw insights and highlight the future directions.

This paper has selected and reviewed 204 papers published from the year 2002–2017. The papers were collected from the web of science and Google scholar database which have the DOI number. The selected papers were then categorized into main five core areas of RSC management namely reverse supply chain (RSC), Reverse Logistics (RL), Remanufacturing, Closed-Loop Supply Chain (CLSC) and Product Recovery Systems (PRS) and then analyzed with great detail. Finally, the research gaps that were identified from the study have been highlighted for future research opportunities.

This paper would serve as a roadmap to the managers who wish to align their forward and reverse supply chains for overall growth and development. It provides an in-depth knowledge on RSC to the researchers working in this domain. The scholars would be able to identify the areas of RSC which have been already addressed and the areas which remain unaddressed.

This paper presents a systematic literature survey of state-of-the-art papers that was published in the reputed journal in the area of RSC. Total 204 numbers of papers which were published in the reputed journals between 2002 and 2017 are reviewed, categorized and analysed to draw the opportunities and future research direction in the area of RSC.