Remanufacturing of the short life-cycle products

Rapid development and innovation in science and technology
have resulted in shorter product life-cycle, especially in
technology-based commodities like mobile phones and
computers. Mounting wastes from such products have received
increasing attentions from government, society, as well as
industries for sustainability concerns. Numerous studies on
remanufacturing have been found on durable goods, but only a
few focusing on short life-cycle products. Even though several
studies implied that successful remanufacturing requires
products to have long useful life and stable technology, there
are other findings that support remanufacturing of short life-
cycle products. It is our intention to investigate
remanufacturing of short life-cycle product. A literature
review is conducted to study the pros and cons, life-cycle
implication, and remanufacturing aspects of short life-cycle
products. Then we propose a framework that can be used to
decide and plan the remanufacturing system. Furthermore, we
conduct a survey to obtain descriptive analysis about the
market potential for remanufactured short life-cycle products.
The factors investigated are existence of demand, customer’s
willingness to pay (WTP), and existence of green segment. The
survey results show that low-end customers are the potential
market segment for short life-cycle remanufactured product,
because they have the highest preference toward
remanufacturing and 95 of them chose remanufactured
product when the price is less than 40 of new product. It is
also shown that green segment exists since 42, 65, and
47 of customers from high-end, low-end, and student sub-
group respectively consider buying remanufactured products
over new ones driven by their concern for the environment.