A Review on the Lifecycle Strategies Enhancing Remanufacturing
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
A Review on the Lifecycle Strategies enhancing Remanufacturing - Comments and Suggestions for Authors
- A brief summary
The main objective of the article is to point out the various strategies which can increase the chances of a product being remanufactured at its end of life. The strategies have been systematically analysed and their implementations have been explained as well as their shortcomings and proposed solutions. The review also gives an outlook on the latest upcoming technologies and their direct or indirect contribution to remanufacturing activities. There is also an insight on research gaps and future works to implement for further improvement.
- Broad comments
The study reviewed and organized current knowledge based on a well-defined question and, the results provided an overview of the current state-of-art in the area of product manufacturing. Questions and objectives have been carefully identified. However, results and conclusions do not provide a significant advancement in knowledge. The study was correctly and technically designed. The methods and tools are described with sufficient details to allow another researcher to reproduce the results. However, it is not clear the number of articles identified for each strategy. The number of articles for each of the strategy categories may be plotted, and also indexed through a diagram. So, the entire population of articles may be used to show a state of the art of strategies implementation. The results are described appropriately with an exception in the section related to the circular economy. The section about the approach needs to be reviewed. Regarding highlighted strategies for increasing remanufacturing, selected strategies are quite significant, but it is not clear the rationale adopted to select and discuss them. Are they the most relevant strategies identified through the literature review? Are they able to support each stage of the value chain for enhancing remanufacturing? Also in the trends section, it is not clear how trends have been identified and their role in the product lifecycle. The conclusions provide general recommendations and highlights research gaps and future works. They are justified and supported by the results. The article is written and presented in an appropriate way. The English language is appropriate and understandable. In conclusion, the work structures current knowledge, provide an overview of the state of the art of the field, and identified research gaps and future works, but it does not provide a significant knowledge advance. To strengthen results and conclusions, authors may consider developing a strategies database for remanufacturing organized according to the stage of the value chain. It may help to provide an overview of strategies for each part of the value chain. An additional tool may be an Implementation Database that contains case studies about the corresponding strategies for each part of the value chain. The developed databases can serve as tools for implementation. An interesting reference example about the two tools is suggested in the specific comments section.
- Specific comments
In the introduction, the authors highlight the environmental, economic and social advantages of implementing remanufacturing. However, it is not clear how remanufacturing would be beneficial for the social domain. It is emphasized the fact that the economic benefit will indirectly improve the accessibility of the product because of a lower cost (line 58). However, in the social domain, is manufacturing able to contribute directly in terms of new skills, job opportunities, o other social benefits?
In terms of challenges (line 74-84), are remanufactured products accepted and considered by potential clients? Are there any limitations in terms of people acceptance?
The main objective (line 100) does not specify the sector of contribution. In the following sentences, the authors refer to strategies implemented in the product domain. Does the article mean to focus on the product domain? Has the study considered the full product domain without any restrictions?
In line 126, the reference citation is missing.
In line 152, a number embedded into the sentence.
In line 146, the reference citation is missing.
Figure 2 is missing. In line 157, the reference citation is missing.
In line 165, the article reports a section 0 in which conclusions are provided. Check for correctness.
In section 3, the article analyses a set of strategies that should improve product remanufacturing. Is there any rationale in the way in which they have been selected and then discussed? Have they been selected and discussed in order of relevance? If yes, how have you identified their relevance?
Moreover, to improve the ability of a product to be remanufactured, some strategies need to be implemented in the design stage while others in the following stages. Have you considered the selection of strategies as well as in the discussion of them in relation to the part of the value chain they implement? It may be interesting to have an overview of them across value chain stages from the design to the recovery and return.
An interesting article is the following article: Yuliya Kalmykova, Madumita Sadagopan, Leonardo Rosado, Circular economy – From review of theories and practices to development of implementation tools, Resources, Conservation and Recycling, Volume 135, 2018, Pages 190-201, ISSN 0921-3449, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2017.10.034. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344917303701).
After analysing different CE approaches and the underlying strategies the study developed tools for CE implementation: 1) a CE strategies database organized according to the stage of the value chain; 2) a CE Implementation Database, which includes over 100 case studies categorized by Scope, Parts of the Value Chain that are involved, as well as by the used Strategy and Implementation Level.
In line 228, the reference citation is missing. In line 283, the listing of options is missing. In line 303, the listing of factors is missing. They are not appropriately listed using bullets.
In line 318, the article refers to US revers logistics committee. The citation is missing, and the reference is taken for granted while it is not commonly known.
The circular economy has been discussed in section 3.6. While section 3 means to discuss the various strategies that can make remanufacturing processes easier, it is not clear how the circular economy contributes to this section. The circular economy is not an additional set of strategies that can help to foster remanufacturing processes; instead, it is an umbrella concept that encompasses various strategies in which remanufacturing strategies are included. The circular economy is a set of strategies in which the strategies end of life product collection, closed-loop supply chain, reverse logistics discussed in the article are part. A circular economy is defined as “a systemic approach to economic development designed to benefit businesses, society, and the environment. In contrast to the ‘take-make-waste linear model, a circular economy is regenerative by design and aims to gradually decouple growth from the consumption of finite resources” (Ellen McArthur Foundation). The section should be reviewed to clarify this concept. A few suggestions about sources on the circular economy approach are:
- Julian Kirchherr, Denise Reike, Marko Hekkert, Conceptualizing the circular economy: An analysis of 114 definitions, Resources, Conservation and Recycling, Volume 127, 2017, Pages 221-232, ISSN 0921-3449, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2017.09.005. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344917302835)
- Yuliya Kalmykova, Madumita Sadagopan, Leonardo Rosado, Circular economy – From review of theories and practices to development of implementation tools, Resources, Conservation and Recycling, Volume 135, 2018, Pages 190-201, ISSN 0921-3449, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2017.10.034. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344917303701).
In line 371, the reference citation is missing.
In line 426, the reference citation is missing.
Regarding the recent trends in remanufacturing, it is not clear how trends have been identified and their role in the product lifecycle. Are they the most frequent innovative techniques discussed in the selected articles? In which part of the product life cycle are they implemented? It may be interesting to understand which parts of the value chain are currently involved in innovation for remanufacturing.
In line 556, the reference citation is missing.
The conclusions confirm current understanding.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The topic, remanufacturing, is highly relevant, and a systematic review on the existing literature would be welcomed. The structure and method for the literature review is well described in this paper, but the outcome is not presented and analyzed as expected. Figure 2, showing the history of relevant publications is most likely highly relevant, but in my review version it is just a black square and not possible to assess. Nevertheless, it would be very interesting to see the 181 key papers coded and quantified: what is the distribution of different strategies over time? Are any strategies fading out? Are any strategies gaining more interest?An illustrative way of doing this could be a table with the identified strategies, and how frequently they occur year by year in the analyzed papers.
In chapter 4, "recent trends" are presented, but with very limited support from the literature review. The section on COBOTs gives two references, the section on SRDM gives no references (or perhaps one? There is an error message in the text), the section on upgrading gives one reference, the section on AM gives one reference (from 2016). For the reader, it is impossible to judge why these strategies are presented as recent trends. This claim must be further supported to be justified.
Overall, the paper would benefit from more updated references in all sections. Papers on remanufacturing from 1995 (Thierry et al.), 1996 (RT Lund), 1998 (Hammond et al.) might be interesting as background illustrations, but do not contribute relevant information about the situation today.
The nomenclature in the end was very helpful. OEM should be explained the first time it is used in the text (line 65?). Now it is done on line 393.
In chapter 4, I would suggest to reorder 4.1 and 4.2, starting with Industry revolution 4.0 and then Smart remanufacturing. In the section on smart remanufacturing, you refer to Industry revolution 4.0 without having explained it.
With a proper, and more in-depth analysis of the identified papers, this paper could be very interesting. This requires a substantial additional effort from the authors.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments:
I was very happy to read the revised version. I think the added graphics are very informative. Just a few minor comments:
1: Figure 2 is in my review version still just a black square. I therefore cannot assess it. I leave it to the editors to look at that.
2: Figure 3 is very interesting. You write in the text that there is a constant increase for all strategies, and no one seems to be fading. That is correct, but an added level of analysis could be to look at relative frequency. EoL seems to be number 1 both 1995-2000 and 2016-2021, with CLSC as number 2, whereas Product service system drops from number 3 to last over time, and Pre-determined remanufacturing time climbs from last position (0 papers) in the first period, to third position in the last period with 15 (?) publications. I think this could be interesting to highlight in connection to this graph.
I would also recommend to sort the legend based on recent frequency, so that EoL comes first and PSS comes last.
3: Figure 4 is also very informative. I would just like to suggest to sort it based on frequency: Industry 4.0 as number one, COBOTs as number two, Upgrading as number three and so forth. That gives added visual information to the reader.
4: In section 3.3, about Predetermined remanufacturing time, I would refer back to figure 3 and comment on the increasing number of publications in this field.
5: In section 4.1, make up your mind if it is called Industry Revolution 4.0 (line 496) or just Industry 4.0 (line 497) or industry 4.0 (line 525)
6: Line 590 Figure 8 Error! reference not found
With these minor adjustments, I would recommend this paper for publication
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
