“Resources, Conservation & Recycling” Call for Papers_”Remanufacturing Opportunities and Challenges for a Sustainable Consumption”
Environmental concerns have prompted companies around the world to seriously think about the sustainability of their products and business processes and operations. The challenge for companies is to design products and delivery processes that will result in a less environmental damage, and at the same time stay competitive in the global market. Remanufacturing is a research field that is gaining attention lately, since it is a process that can help companies to become environmentally sustainable by considering all these factors simultaneously (materials, processes and recycling). Remanufacturing is an industrial process whereby used products are disassembled, cleaned, reprocessed, inspected, and then reassembled to be used again. This concept has also gained significant importance because of consumer awareness, oversight from non-governmental organizations and legislative pressures which have encouraged manufacturers to produce eco-friendly products, and thus, more and more manufacturers now build reverse channels to recover used products for remanufacturing (Subramoniam et al., 2013; Long et al., 2019). Thus, remanufacturing strategy through design for the environment (DfE) can be considered as a way of complying with environmental legislation, but also as a business opportunity (Feng et al., 2019; Zheng et al.). Despite this growth in remanufacturing activities, there is a general acknowledge
that more research efforts are needed in order to examine in depth the relationships between sustainable consumption and remanufactured products (Abbey et al., 2015; Govindan, et al., 2015; Govindan, 2018).
This Virtual Special Issue (VSI) attempts to impel new research in the fields of remanufacturing and sustainable consumption with the objective of helping companies with their sustainability challenges and in turn to be competitive in the 21st century global market. The objective of this VSI is to generate research that proposes suitable strategies, and relevant methods and technologies for the development of sustainable remanufacturing. Research focused on strategies and man-
agement systems that can help to increase benefits and reduces costs (economic, social and environmental) and measure such benefits and costs is also welcome. In practice, it is important for companies to adjust their performance and management strategies in response to the new environmental demands of consumers with the introduction of remanufactured products that contribute to the conservation of natural resources, raw materials, and sustainable development.
Authors are invited to submit research and/or review papers.
