An economical and technical analysis of a household appliance remanufacturing process

Analyses technical and economical aspects of a specific remanufacturing process at Electrolux AB in Motala, Sweden. The organisation is examined and all remanufacturing steps are analysed in order to find out where to put the most effort to make the remanufacturing process more efficient. The technical analysis showed that the bottleneck in the remanufacturing process was the cleaning step. Suggestions on how to make the cleaning more efficient are described in the article. Economical calculation show which activities hold the largest cost shares. The method for doing these calculations was activity based costing (ABC). This method was chosen since it seemed more preferable in comparison to traditional methods. It was found that two remanufacturing activities stand for the most costs, which were the storing of products and administration of the entire process.