Aim: The purpose of this research is to explore the challenges and opportunities regarding circular strategies in the automotive industry for electric vehicle (EV) components in Thailand. It focuses on the life cycle management of EV battery packs, such as repair, reuse, refurbishment,remanufacturing, and recycling. Furthermore, it aims to explore future challenges and opportunities for such strategies in the market in Thailand and to evaluate them from an economic, ecological, and technical perspective.Research methods: Primary data from online surveys, observations, and market exhibition visits are generated. Additionally, secondary data from literature reviews, web searches, and market forecast data are explored. Using the foresight method, this input is summarized, evaluated, and the basis for an outlook of future challenges and opportunities.Results: This research provides information on the local attitude towards circular strategies in the market and culture in Thailand. It maps the existing circular strategies in the EV market and provides a forecast of the potential future challenges and opportunities for such strategies in this market in Thailand.Conclusion: The strong automotive infrastructure in Thailand and incentives from the Thai administration to increase to share of sold and locally produced EVs are providing market opportunities for circular strategies for battery packs in Thailand. At the same time, missing national Thai standards and regulations as well as a lack of remanufacturing awareness within Thai society are challenges for this business concept.

In product-as-a-service (PaaS) systems, the ownership of products remains with original equipmentmanufacturers (OEMs), and customers get access to the functionality of products by signing a usagerelatedcontract. The PaaS business model changes the boundary conditions of a production systemand related logistics. To increase circularity, PaaS shall be supported by value retention processes,such as remanufacturing. Currently, remanufacturing in PaaS in business-to-consumer markets (B2C)is a niche practice. This paper aims to identify the main challenges and enablers for OEMs to scale upremanufacturingwhentransitioning to PaaS in B2C. Through the PRISMA systematic literature reviewof 48 relevant articles, we identify 20 challenges and 19 enablers, grouped into six areas: products,legislation and policy, customers and market, servitisation, remanufacturing process, and the returnsystem. To make this study more actionable, we applied a gap analysis and combined the theoreticalfindings with an assessment of their impact in practice by five experts with experience in industrialcases. As a result, we have narrowed the list of factors to 12 challenges and 14 enablers. These factorsare structured as a decision aid for OEMs to facilitate their transition to remanufacturing in PaaS.

Despite remanufacturing being a value-retention process capable of bringing both economic and environmental benefits to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), the remanufacturing market is small, and the OEM share on the market is even smaller. There are trends in OEMs hesitating to initiate remanufacturing due to the lack of knowledge or often unjustified assumptions about how remanufacturing affects their business-as-usual. To further motivate OEMs to initiate remanufacturing, there is a need to extend the remanufacturing initiation theory to showcase how remanufacturing could be initiated in practice. Therefore, this paper aims to describe a remanufacturing initiation and demonstrate the initiation steps for OEMs by developing a remanufacturing initiation framework. The framework is developed based on a remanufacturing initiation led by an OEM of robotic lawn mowers. Based on the case study, a 5-step approach for initiating remanufacturing (5AFIR) framework—the remanufacturing sapphire—was developed to interpret and visualise the remanufacturing approach taken at the studied OEM. The framework steps consist of the following: (1) Select a product family, (2) involve actors prone to be impacted by remanufacturing, (3) iteratively identify prerequisites and assess the system performance, (4) develop a plan and industrialise remanufacturing, and (5) refine and validate the assessment in Step 3.

Remanufacturing has been studied extensively from an economic modelling perspective. However, the number of studies focusing on models that consider the implementation difficulties in industry, such as data availability and model transparency, is low in comparison. This paper aims to identify how an initiation of remanufacturing can be economically assessed with models particularly suitable for implementation in industry. These models should contribute to spreading the know-how about initiating remanufacturing to transit industries towards more circular resource flows. To target the aim, a systematic literature review was conducted. The search resulted in a total of 964 papers published through August 2021. The relevant papers were categorised into a two-dimensional framework indicating the level of computer support needed to handle the model and the level of requirements to use the model in terms of data requirements, both of which are considered essential in the industrial implementation of the models. The review revealed a further need for research on assessing remanufacturing initiation profitability, especially on economic assessment models designed to assist industries without previous remanufacturing knowledge in such an initiation.

Remanufacturing is a circular strategy increasingly adopted by more and more manufacturing companies. However, the remanufacturingsuitability of products may differ. This paper aims to develop a method of assessing the suitability of products to be remanufactured. This researchused a case study approach with interviews and observations at a case company supported by the research literature. The suitability assessmenthas been applied to a handheld battery-driven assembly tool based on factors acting as barriers or enablers for remanufacturing. The assessmentis suggested to consist of two parts: a product type assessment with factors such as scale of sale, market, and reverse logistics, and a productdesign assessment with factors connected to product design and the remanufacturing process steps. For handheld battery-driven assembly tools,at the case company, the most critical barriers are their large number of variants in combination with the small scale of sale for each variant.These barriers can be avoided by introducing upgradability, standardization, and modularity in future product designs, thus enhancing theirremanufacturability. The most significant remanufacturability enabler is to design for service and repair.

Design for disassembly is an effective strategy to increase the possibilities for repairing, remanufacturing, and recycling, which means to keep products in circulation longer. The furniture industry in Sweden is becoming more and more circular. By applying a design for disassembly strategy to a product from European Furniture Group (EFG), this chapter aims to show how products in the furniture industry can be better adapted for a circular economy, especially for repair and remanufacturing. This chapter provides critical insights into circular furniture design through enabling design for disassembly to promote the environmentally conscious design of products. The industrial contribution of this chapter is that it brings value to furniture designers and manufacturers who want to design products for longer and multiple lifecycles.

Originating from years of economic instability, a recent positive development of the Cambodian economy is leading to a rising number of registered vehicles, mainly motorcycles. With this rise, the demand for spare parts is also increasing significantly. Differing from other countries, where a share of the spare parts is covered by remanufactured parts, there is no remanufacturing alternative to new parts available in Cambodia. As such, little is known about the Cambodian remanufacturing market. Therefore, this research aims to explore the awareness of motorcycle users in Cambodia of remanufactured parts as an alternative to new spare parts. To fulfil the aim, data from 491 Cambodian motorcycle users were collected and analyzed through structured interviews and online surveys. The main findings conclude that a vast majority of the Cambodian motorcycle users are aware of the remanufacturing alternatives to new spare parts but in many cases the perception is negative, and the new parts are seen as superior to remanufactured parts.

Remanufacturing is a value-retaining process that can be adopted to reach a more circular economy. Itpresents a promising opportunity for improving resource efficiency and enhancing sustainable activitiestoday and in the future. This paper contains environmental assessments of remanufactured automotiveparts compared to newly produced parts. The aim is to address the potential of reducing global warmingimpact as well as improving resource and energy efficiency. The result is used to assess the potential ofapplying a remanufacturing strategy to reduce environmental load and to determine the variables that areof major importance. Assumptions, methods, and data are consistently applied for all product groups,making it possible to draw conclusions considering specific characteristics of the different automotiveparts. The results show that collecting used automotive parts (cores) and remanufacturing them leads to asubstantially lower environmental load than when producing new parts. The reuse rate of a core and theenergy used in the remanufacturing process are the main environmental hotspots. Reusing largercomponents primarily affects global warming and energy use, while the type of material is the mainaspect regarding abiotic resources. Energy use is a primary contributing factor considering globalwarming and cumulative energy use. The overall effects due to transports are similar for the two product systems, even though the payload is lower with remanufacturing due to higher share of transports withtrucks.

Design is described as the main factor influencing a product’s sustainability. Life cycle assessment is used to determine the environmental impact of a product during its life cycle. However, conducting an LCA requires large amounts of information that can be difficult to obtain. For this reason, together with the fact that an LCA is time-consuming, there is reason to explore the possibilities for a simplified life cycle assessment (SLCA). The aim of this paper is to investigate how an SLCA tool could be developed to support decision making in product development processes. The SLCA tool developed for product designers includes e.g. climate impact results. The tool gives the designers an understanding of where efforts to reduce the climate impact can be allocated.