Resources, Conservation & Recycling xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Resources, Conservation & Recycling

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/resconrec

Full length article

Adaptive remanufacturing for multiple lifecycles: A case study in office

furniture
⁎
Mark Krystofik , Allen Luccitti, Kyle Parnell, Michael Thurston
Golisano Institute for Sustainability (GIS), Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), Rochester, NY, USA

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Remanufacturing has achieved viability in a diversity of industrial markets as a means to both maintain the value
Circular economy of products and minimize waste. From carpet tiling to manufacturing robots, a wide range of goods have pre-
Closed-loop supply chain sently established supply and consumer networks that support remanufacturing, and thus offer a point of entry
Remanufacturing into a more circular industrial economy. Based on this performance, it is reasonable to expect that re-
Multiple lifecycle
manufacturing can in some cases be made an iterative endeavor; that existing networks may be leveraged to
Adaptive remanufacturing
create additional lifecycles for previously remanufactured goods at net environmental and economic gain over
virgin production. This case study identifies and explores factors of Davies Office, Inc. (Davies) remanufacturing
processes for office furniture that affect the economic and environmental practicality of creating multiple re-
manufacturing cycles. Specifically, we use Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to estimate the impacts of multiple
remanufacturing cycles and how these are affected by “adaptive remanufacturing,” a neologism to describe the
use of an end-of-life (EOL) product core to create a similar, but non-identical product. LCA results suggest that
adaptive remanufacturing is both an environmentally preferable and economically viable business strategy.
Specifically, the ability to update, reconfigure, and customize previously obsolete products to meet present
market demands enables lifecycle extension beyond what is achievable with traditional remanufacturing. In this,
the study posits that such adaptive remanufacturing techniques not only expand the potential environmental
benefits of remanufacturing, but enhances the long-term economic viability of remanufacturing in durable
product markets.

1. Introduction
1.1. Remanufacturing
As resource scarcity, energy costs, and supply chain management
emerge as important factors in the sustainability of modern manu-
facturing, steps must be taken to challenge the linearity of “take-make-
waste” production models. In response to this need, remanufacturing of
products through the isolation of used product cores, addition of new
materials, and subsequent reconstruction of finished goods is becoming
both a significant market player and a major focus of research (Yang
et al., 2011). Broadly, remanufacturing involves returning a previously
used product to a level of form and function effectively equivalent to
when that product was new. In some cases, remanufacturing can up-
grade a product to condition beyond its original state by, for example,
correcting for original product design flaws or adding functional or
aesthetic enhancements not present in the original product. Several
studies demonstrate that remanufacturing operations consistently
achieve energy savings (Sahni et al., 2010), cost savings (Abbey et al.,
2015), and increased material efficiency (Gamage et al., 2008) relative
to new products. Previous analyses of Davies Office Furniture by the
National Center for Remanufacturing and Resource Recovery (NC3R)
outline such savings and estimate resultant environmental benefits in
the specific case of office furniture (NC3R, 2005).
The fundamental premise of remanufacturing is that it extends the
life of a good in the product stream, maintaining its value (Bakker et al.,
2014). With durable goods such as office furniture, this lifespan ex-
tension provides the opportunity to create additional lifecycles by re-
manufacturing a single product multiple times. However, this requires a
reliable supply of virgin and previously remanufactured products whose
durability and characteristics are such that the investment of further
time, energy, and materials into their restoration remains both eco-
nomically and environmentally preferable to virgin production. As-
sessment of this viability has uncertainty, as both environmental im-
pacts and economic performance fluctuate with a number of variables.
A study on the lifecycle environmental impacts of remanufacturing

⁎
Corresponding author at: Golisano Institute for Sustainability, 190 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY 14623, USA.
E-mail address: makgis@rit.edu (M. Krystofik).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2017.07.028
Received 9 January 2017; Received in revised form 3 July 2017; Accepted 18 July 2017
0921-3449/ © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Krystofik, M., Resources, Conservation & Recycling (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2017.07.028
M. Krystofik et al.
laser printer toner cartridges (Hilton, 2011) suggests that environ-
mental impacts of multiple remanufacturing cycles increase with each
additional cycle in comparison to the immediately preceding series.
However, as each cycle is still less harmful than virgin production, net
environmental benefit grows for a finite number of lifecycles. Krystofik
et al. (2014) draw similar conclusions for refilling (i.e. re-
manufacturing) inkjet cartridges, but consider that transportation be-
tween end user and refilling service provider (i.e., remanufacturer)
introduces considerable variability in actual environmental benefit.
Economically, remanufacturing as a hybrid component of primary
manufacturing is known to be a profit-boosting strategy that can both
reduce material costs and create complimentary revenue streams (Ayres
et al., 1997; Chen and Chang, 2012). While remanufacturing cannot
exist without virgin OEM production within incumbent economic
structures, profitability in a remanufacturing-focused business model,
like Davies, can be supported through cost-minimizing coordination of
end-of-life (EOL) product collection and remanufacturing activities
(Geyer et al., 2007). However, it is necessary to consider that like all
products, office furniture has a finite degree of durability, and that as
condition degrades with subsequent lifecycles, the material and energy
intensity of remanufacturing—and thus the environmental and eco-
nomic costs—may increase (Gallo et al., 2012).
1.2. Closed-loop supply chain
Contemporary manufacturing industries increasingly look to the
concept of a circular economy as a means to reduce waste, avoid costs,
and improve environmental footprints at the institutional level
(Schulte, 2013). Central to this concept is the notion of a closed-loop
supply chain; resource networks and processes that enable materials
from products otherwise designated as waste to be utilized in a valuable
manner (Guide et al., 2003). Within the context of office furniture,
original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are known to participate, to
a degree, in circular planning through material recycling. Steelcase™
office panel systems are advertised to contain 46% recycled material
and 71% EOL recyclable material (Steelcase, 2014). However, the
Steelcase company does not itself engage directly in remanufacturing
activities, relying instead on the acquisition of secondary material from
an independent recycler. Thus, while the OEM supply chain in-
corporates a circular element, it is still primarily open-loop, as the
majority of its material is derived from primary sources, and at least
29% of material components are disposed of at EOL stages (with the
actual material recovery ratio likely falling below the full potential
71%).
In contrast, businesses such as Davies Office are well positioned to
benefit from a more complete closed-loop model. Davies’ primary raw
material supply consists of finished, EOL office furniture products, a
large portion of which would be sent to landfill disposal if not re-
manufactured. By creating additional lifecycles for material that would
be otherwise discarded, Davies avoids the generation of nearly two tons
of landfill waste for every hundred remanufactured office panels
(NC3R, 2005). This diversion of otherwise wasted material to a value-
added form is fundamental to the sustainable closed-loop supply chain
approach (Winkler, 2011). Further, Davies’ incoming office furniture
cores are sourced from business-sector enterprises wherein finished
products have reached the end of usable life through either condition
degradation, business relocation or closure, or style preference change.
Interestingly, this same sector of consumers makes up the customer
population for Davies’ products. In these respects, Davies currently
embodies the circular economy model in two major ways: [1] its op-
erations create valuable goods from waste products conventionally
perceived to be of low value (Lacy and Rutqvist, 2015; Winkler, 2011)
and [2] its logistics channels are structured to simultaneously minimize
waste opportunities and maintain both a viable resource stream and
consistent customer base (Savaskan et al., 2004).
2
Resources, Conservation & Recycling xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
1.3. Market adaptability
The examples mentioned in section 1.1 (Hilton, Krystofik et al.,
Ayres et al.)—and, indeed, much of the literature concerning multiple
remanufacturing cycles—consider scenarios wherein either products
are of relatively stable design or remanufacturing is conducted by OEMs
who are able to dictate and anticipate changes in design. It is important
to consider, however, that within the context of office furniture, third-
party (non-OEM) remanufacturers have neither of these advantages;
preferred styles in office furniture evolve rapidly with consumer de-
mands, and remanufacturers only have access to product designs that
already exist. As a result, remanufacturers must be able to account for
and respond to changing design preferences if economic viability is to
be maintained (Gu et al., 2004). In other words, because market pre-
ferences change rapidly, the original style and/or function of EOL office
furniture products may already be obsolete, and thus noncompetitive,
by the time of remanufacturing; remanufacturers are therefore chal-
lenged to create products that are better than their as-manufactured
condition to achieve fitness for the current market. For example, while
Davies has recognized a shift in customer preferences towards office
divider panels that are shorter than years past, most incoming cores are
still full-height. Davies restores some of these to their original con-
dition—at full height—but also recognizes the opportunity to create
products better suited to shifting preferences by reducing height and
adding features more conducive to open work environments. From the
customer perspective, this process, called “indexing,” makes the pro-
duct better for current markets than when it was as new, and thus more
competitive with virgin products. Aziz et al. (2016) refer to this con-
sideration as “designing for upgradability,” and assert that an optimal
strategy must maintain effective functional equivalence with the cur-
rent virgin product market to preserve the economic viability of re-
manufacturing.
1.4. Multiple remanufacturing cycles
In light of these concepts, creating multiple remanufacturing cycles
presents challenges that can potentially confound the determination of
environmental impacts and, in some cases, limit profitability to a point
of impracticality. One such challenge is that the virgin production
supply chain, a linear, one-way model designed to sell as much virgin
office furniture as possible, supports only an initial remanufacturing
cycle by providing EOL products. Sustaining multiple remanufacturing
cycles, however, requires a reverse supply stream of previously re-
manufactured products. Chen et al. (2015) illustrate that the con-
sistency of such a supply stream is wrought with uncertainty; even if a
reliable supply stream is identified, the variability of product type and
condition within that stream is likely to be high. This is an essential
consideration with respect to both material and energy intensities. As
Gallo et al. (2012) highlight, wear, and thus required material and
energy inputs for replacement or repair, increase with each additional
lifecycle. As a result, additional lifecycles may also increase the degree
of core fallout and the need to replace parts with virgin materials,
corresponding to an increase in costs and environmental impacts. In
addition, traditional systems that restore products to their original form
may be hurt by variations in incoming product type that disrupt the
consistency of product availability, thereby requiring virgin material
integration to make up for potential supply deficits of suitable cores.
Given these realities, it seems a physical inevitability that creating
additional remanufacturing cycles will at some point result in a high
enough energy and material impact that virgin production is actually
preferable to extending product life any further. With respect to office
furniture, welding and powder coating are the most significant con-
tributors to CED in virgin production (Dietz, 2005). Likewise, previous
analyses suggest Davies’ most common remanufacturing activities are
cutting, welding, powder coating, and reupholstering associated with
design reconfiguration (NC3R, 2005). Beyond in-house manufacturing
M. Krystofik et al.
processes, Hilton (2011) and Krystofik et al. (2014) note that trans-
portation between EOL and remanufacturing locations is also a sig-
nificant contributor to CED, contending that as the number of addi-
tional lifecycles—and therefore the number of transportation
cycles—increases, the embodied energy of the remanufactured product
increases concurrently. Thus, because office furniture remanufacturing
relies in part on the same energy-intensive processes as virgin pro-
duction and requires repeated transportation, it is reasonable to suggest
that at some point, the CED for a remanufacturing cycle will approach
and may eventually exceed that of a virgin product. Estimating a
practical range for the number of additional cycles that can be created
before reaching this threshold point is a complex task, and is beyond
the scope of this study. Rather, this paper aims to explore how Davies’
adaptive remanufacturing approach may affect the magnitude of
change in impacts between remanufacturing cycles, and thus the rate at
which this point is approached. Understanding the influence of these
approaches on environmental impacts is critical to establishing an in-
dustrial framework concerning the environmental benefits of multiple
remanufacturing cycles in a more circular economy. To this end, we use
life cycle assessment (LCA) strategies to explore the environmental
impacts of multiple remanufacturing cycles in office furniture, taking
into account both closed-loop supply chain management and market-
adaptable design as major elements of a successful business model for
this product sector.
In this, the work provides a case study for the post-consumer office
furniture industry—projected to become a $2.7 billion market by 2020
(Technavio, 2016)—that investigates pathways to improving the cir-
cularity of the industrial economy.
1.5. Adaptive remanufacturing
The indexing process outlined in Section 1.3 is a unique component
of Davies’ circular business model that allows the company to adapt its
product offerings to changing market preferences without requiring a
fundamental change in its resource supply chain. To describe this
concept and its impacts more broadly, we introduce the term adaptive
remanufacturing to suggest the use of an EOL product core to create a
similar but non-identical product whose function and use characteristics
are effectively equivalent to the original new product. In contrast to
recycling, where EOL products are broken down and used as the raw
material in a characteristically different product for a different purpose,
adaptive remanufacturing maintains the original product’s function in
the same application, but may change its form, configuration, or con-
struction in order to establish functional equivalence with con-
temporary virgin products. For example, EOL newsprint may be re-
cycled and the raw material used as a component of fiber-based thermal
building insulation [downcycling] (CIMA, 2013). Similarly, German
design company Adidas has prototyped a process to reclaim discarded
nylon fishing nets for use as a raw material in the 3D knitting of athletic
footwear [upcycling] (Adidas, 2015). In each of these examples, the
original product is first reduced to its raw material state and then used
as a component of a product sharing no form or function with the
original product. Adaptive remanufacturing, in contrast, is application-
equivalent and may be employed repeatedly. In this regard, adaptive
remanufacturing likely reduces environmental impacts further than
recycling by avoiding the cost, energy, and material integrity impacts of
secondary (raw) material processing.
We assert that leveraging market adaptable design to facilitate
multiple remanufacturing cycles not only improves the environmental
profile of multiple remanufacturing cycles beyond standard re-
manufacturing, but also improves economic viability by maintaining
competitiveness with evolving contemporary markets. In this, we con-
tend that adaptive remanufacturing across multiple remanufacturing
cycles offers a novel perspective that, applied more broadly in en-
vironmentally-conscious design and manufacturing, may be a useful
tool in transition to more circular industrial economy models.
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Resources, Conservation & Recycling xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
2. Methods
2.1. Framework
To evaluate the hypothesis that adaptive remanufacturing yields
lower environmental impacts than both virgin production and tradi-
tional remanufacturing, a quantitative Life Cycle Assessment of Davies’
remanufacturing activities was performed. A complete report was
published through the New York State Center of Excellence in
Advanced and Sustainable Manufacturing (COE-ASM, 2016) and ap-
proved through a peer review process in accordance with the Interna-
tional Organisation for Standardization (ISO) framework for Life Cycle
Assessment ISO 14040:2006 (ISO, 2006). Within this assessment, the
effects of specific adaptive design strategies on the environmental im-
pacts of remanufacturing were explored. Based on these observations,
we also explored the influence of original product design on the ability
to adaptively remanufacture, and thus on the impacts of re-
manufacturing in general.
Quantitative evaluations were based on the ISO framework, and
subsequent assessments and interpretations were guided by the
Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association
(BIFMA) Product Category Rules (PCR) for Environmental Product
Declarations (EPD) regarding Office Furniture Workspace Products and
Seating (BIFMA, 2014, 2015). These guidelines are themselves governed
under the United Nations Central Product Classification (UNCPC)
system codes 3814 and 3811, respectively (UN, 2015).
2.2. Goal and scope
2.2.1. Goal
This study was ultimately conducted to compare the environmental
impacts of remanufactured Steelcase Avenir® office furniture products
offered by Davies Office Furniture, Inc. to the equivalent OEM virgin
products. These assessments include evaluation of Davies’ adaptive
design and remanufacturing processes over multiple remanufacturing
cycles. As a result, secondary goals were to explore the environmental
impacts of adaptively remanufactured products in comparison to those
remanufactured only to their original form, as well as the influence of
adaptively designed products on the impacts of subsequent re-
manufacturing cycles.
2.2.2. Scope
This assessment focuses on a conventional Steelcase Avenir® office
cubicle workspace system that includes three constituent components:
work surfaces, storage units, and wall panels (Table 1). Because the
virgin OEM and Davies remanufactured systems are characteristically
different, the system boundaries considered in each system are ne-
cessarily unique. Dietz (2005) provides a standardized LCA for the OEM
system; data and boundary parameters regarding the materials, man-
ufacturing, and transportation processes are adapted from this study to
build a virgin product model to which Davies product models are
Table 1
Constituent components of complete office systems including surfaces, storage, and wall
panels.
Item Quantity Dimension (inches)
Work Surface 3 24W × 48L × 1.5H
Work Surface 1 24W × 42L × 1.5H
Panel 2 48W × 52H
Panel 1 42W × 65H
Panel 1 48W × 65H
Panel 1 48W × 33H
Panel 2 42W × 52H
3-Drawer Pedestal 1 15W × 24L × 28H
2-Drawer File 1 36W × 18L × 28H
M. Krystofik et al.
compared. Davies’ system (Fig. 1) in contrast, is considered to begin at
the end user as the major material supplier, with only a small portion of
material coming from primary manufacturers, and a much smaller vo-
lume of material sent to landfill.
These systems remain the same throughout remanufacturing life-
cycles, as Davies’ adaptive process only slightly alters the volumes of
material sent to recycling, but does not require any additional system
elements. In remanufacturing, product disassembly is typically under-
taken only to the level required to restore a product to new-equivalent
condition. Accordingly, for this study, Davies employed varying levels
of disassembly which were dependent upon both the component cate-
gory and the condition of the component core.
As the items in this study do not themselves consume energy during
use, use-phase impacts of both OEM and remanufactured systems are
assumed to be equivalently negligible, and are therefore excluded from
the boundary of consideration. Likewise, data for the maintenance,
upkeep, and warranty repair of these systems—assumed to be of com-
paratively limited impact in either case—are not widely available for
either system. Because the remanufactured system is intended to
achieve OEM-equivalent lifecycle performance, these impacts are also
considered equal between the two systems. As a result, use-phase im-
pacts are collectively excluded from this study, and the focus remains
primarily on material acquisition, manufacturing, and transportation
processes.
2.3. Functional unit
Because each constituent component of the office system must
function in concert with the others to serve the intended purpose, the
functional unit considered in this study was one complete workspace
system (the collection of components in Table 1) supporting one user
for a service life of ten years—the length of Davies’ warranty and the
service life defined in UNCPC 3184. While the total space occupied by a
complete system, is 8.73 m2, results of this study are normalized to
impact per one square meter. Assessments are performed for each in-
dividually manufactured component and considered collectively in
terms of a complete system. This level of detail also enables a more
complete understanding of the contributions from each component to
total lifecycle impacts.
2.4. Inventory analysis
Measurements of OEM components (i.e., incoming cores), re-
manufactured components, and repeatedly remanufactured
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Resources, Conservation & Recycling xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
Fig. 1. Davies remanufacturing system boundary
showing closed-loop supply chains and OEM system
in background.
components illustrate the material composition of the office system
throughout multiple remanufacturing cycles. Within these cycles,
Davies’ most common indexing practice uses virgin panels in the 48″
W × 65″ H size to create 48″ W × 52″ H panels. While Davies does
index work surfaces and storage equipment, such reconfiguration is
typically undertaken as a customized request rather than standard
practice; this study therefore modeled only non-indexed units in these
product types in effort to represent remanufacturing processes more
broadly. After indexing, residual material generally cannot be im-
mediately reused, and is thus sent to recycling (Table 2).
Beyond material disposition, the most significant difference be-
tween product lifecycles is the accumulation of laminate material on
the work surface. Currently, Davies adds a new layer of laminate on top
of the existing layer in both the first and second remanufacturing cy-
cles. It is important to consider, however, that the addition of new la-
minate eventually becomes unfeasible, as accumulating surface thick-
ness will bring the component out of tolerance, thereby rendering it
incompatible with the rest of the office system. In these cases, Davies
remanufacturing procedures dictate that all layers of laminate are
stripped completely, and a single new layer applied to the still intact
surface body. Because surface components within the scope of this
study do not typically reach this stage, stripping and relamination were
not modeled here.
Table 3 outlines the material composition of the Avenir office
system. Compositional and lifecycle manufacturing process data for
OEM components was derived from Dietz (2005). Davies re-
manufactured system data was derived from product and process
measurements taken at the company’s production facility.
2.5. Impact assessment
This study used SimaPro 8.0.4 LCA modeling software in conjunc-
tion with the Ecoinvent 3 lifecycle database to build models based on
Table 2
Residual material after indexing, sent to recycling.
Material Composition (kg)
48 × 52 42 × 65 48 × 33 42 × 52
Steel 2.00 1.04 4.91 3.04
Chip board 0.29 0.18 0.70 0.43
Particle board 0.63 0.39 1.55 0.94
Batting 0.28 0.18 0.70 0.43
M. Krystofik et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

Table 3
Material composition of Steelcase Avenir® system components.

Composition (kg)

Component Quantity Material 48 × 52 42 × 65 48 × 65 48 × 33 42 × 52

Panels Panel Frame 1 Steel 11.19 11.98 12.65 9.07 10.52

Top Cap 1 Steel 0.98 0.86 0.98 0.98 0.86
Side rails 2 Vinyl 0.28 0.35 0.35 0.18 0.28
Snap-on frame 2 Steel 2.08 2.23 2.35 1.69 1.96
Fabric Skin 2 Fabric 0.42 0.46 0.52 0.27 0.37
Tack Board 2 Pressed fiberglass 1.26 1.37 1.57 0.80 1.10
Acoustical Filler 2 Cellulose batting 0.57 0.62 0.71 0.36 0.50
Chipboard Divider 1 Cardboard 1.14 1.25 1.43 0.72 1.00

Component Quantity Material Composition (kg)

48 × 24 Straight 48 × 24 Corner

OEM Reman 1 Reman 2 OEM Reman 1 Reman

2

Work Surface Surface body 1 Particle board 21.9 21.9 21.9 30.5 30.5 30.5
Protective layer 1 Laminate 1.0 2.0 3.0 1.49 2.98 4.47
Protective layer 1 PVC edge 0.05 0.06 0.06 0.05 0.06 0.06
Adhesive 1 Spray adhesive 0.11 0.11 0.11 0.11 0.11 0.11

Storage Lateral File 1 Steel 49.2 49.2 49.2 – – –

Pedestal 1 Steel 31.1 31.1 31.1 – – –

real-world data. Within this framework, environmental impacts were
evaluated using the ReCiPe 1.11 midpoint+ method and the
Cumulative Energy Demand 1.09 impact assessment library. CED was
chosen as the primary impact metric in this study for two reasons: first,
CED enables the application of this framework to remanufacturing
systems across products, contexts, and geographic locations where en-
ergy and transportation infrastructures may differ, but specific manu-
facturing processes likely remain similar. Second, CED acts as a rela-
tively sound indicator of impact patterns in other categories as well.
Impact assessment adopts methodology developed by Hilton (2011)
and his later work (Hilton and Williamson, 2012) that considers life-
cycle impacts on both an independent and blended basis. In the former,
boundaries are drawn around each remanufacturing cycle, and its im-
pacts are normalized as a portion of the original OEM cycle. In the
latter, impacts are considered over the entire life of the product, pro-
viding a metric for total environmental impact.
3. LCA results
3.1. System-level independent life cycle CED
Assessments focus on three product life cycles: (1) OEM production;
(2) an initial remanufacturing cycle in which only wall panels are
Fig. 2. Independent manufacturing life cycle CED of complete office system (panels,
surfaces, & storage).
indexed, referred to as Reman 1; and (3) a subsequent remanufacturing
cycle in which no further indexing occurs, referred to as Reman 2. At
the complete system-level, these are each considered as independent
lifecycles in effort to enable direct comparison between processes.
The independent Reman 1 lifecycle includes an indexing process in
which a selection of wall panels is resized in effort to adapt system
design to contemporary specifications. The independent Reman 2 life-
cycle considers remanufacturing without any indexing. Results illustrate
that both the first and second remanufacturing cycles each consume
approximately 18 percent as much energy as OEM production (Fig. 2).
While the Reman 2 cycle does show slight growth over Reman 1, this
difference is proportionally trivial.
3.2. Component-level combined life cycle CED
While the independent approach provides insight into the relatively
level impacts of multiple remanufacturing cycles, combined lifecycle
evaluation illustrates how the total impact profile changes over time.
The combined model aggregates impacts accumulated over all life cy-
cles prior to and including that in question, and provides an impact
estimate in consideration of the distribution of those impacts over all
lifecycles up to that point. Combined lifecycle evaluations of each
component suggest that across the actual realized life of the constituent
materials, multiple remanufacturing cycles in each case lower the total
environmental impacts of an office system beyond what was achieved
in the initial remanufacturing cycle; in other words, total environ-
mental benefit increases with the number of remanufacturing cycles
(Fig. 3).
While this is not an uncommon finding with the combined lifecycle
method, of particular note in this case is the magnitude of additional
benefit realized in additional remanufacturing cycles. Remanufacturing
the wall panel a second time yielded a nearly 23 percent net im-
provement over remanufacturing a single time. This significant im-
provement is enabled by initial and subsequent remanufacturing pro-
cesses that are effectively equivalent in their independent impacts; that
is to say, cumulative environmental benefit is not in this case offset by
increased impacts in subsequent remanufacturing cycles, as is the case
with some other products (HP, 2014; Krystofik et al., 2014).

5
M. Krystofik et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

Fig. 3. Combined manufacturing Life Cycle CED of wall panel section (48″ W × 65″ H Fig. 5. Material use impacts in independent lifecycles.
OEM, indexed to height < 65″ in Reman 1).

3.3. Independent life cycle material use

In all cases, environmental impacts are attributed largely to the

production of raw materials to be used in either OEM production or part
replacement during remanufacturing where repair is not a viable op-
tion. Remanufacturing, in its fundamental nature, avoids significant
environmental impact by preserving the functional capability of some
original materials. In multiple remanufacturing cycles, however, there
is commonly an expectation that additional cycles will require greater
material replacement, and thus engender increased material use im-
pacts. Analysis of Davies’ multiple remanufacturing cycles suggests, in
contrast, that material reuse rates at the second remanufacturing cycle
are in most cases identical to the first (Table 4), contributing to the
nearly equivalent impact across multiple remanufacturing lifecycles
when assessed independently (Fig. 5) and the associated decrease in
overall combined impact. While some discarded materials are sent to
landfill and replaced with virgin elements, steel—the material of
greatest impact—that cannot be reused (e.g. from indexing streams) is
recycled, providing a credit that partially offsets the attributable impact
of virgin replacement materials. Importantly, this model yielded vir-
tually identical material impacts for a conventionally remanufactured
(i.e. non-indexed) system. This suggests that while adaptive re-
manufacturing does not in this case create an independently notable
benefit compared to conventional remanufacturing, it also does not
Fig. 4. Combined manufacturing life cycle CED of work surface (top) and lateral file
create significant additional impacts.
(bottom) sections, both not indexed.

Similarly, remanufacturing work surfaces and storage units a second 3.4. Sensitivity analysis
time yields 22- and 19-percent reductions in combined lifecycle impacts
over initial cycles (Fig. 4). 3.4.1. Energy
This LCA relies on the assumption that CED acts as a sound indicator
of overall environmental impact; that is, we posit that higher CED likely
corresponds to higher environmental impacts of all kinds. However, it
Table 4 must be acknowledged that this relationship is general, and does not
Material reuse rates for each system component; work surface laminate and protective account for differences in regional energy grid mixes that may cause
edge bands, as well as panel side rails and fabric upholstery are replaced with new ma-
variations in specific impacts. While the CED of remanufacturing pro-
terials in each cycle.
cesses is invariably lower than that of OEM manufacturing, sensitivity
Component 1st Reuse Yield 2nd Reuse Yield analysis attempts to investigate the influence that regional energy
mixes may have on these specific impacts. CED itself, however, is a
Surface Work Surface Core 99% 99%
function of process intensity and thus does not change based on the
Laminate 0% 0%
PVC Edge Band 0% 0% source of that energy; rather, only specific impacts may differentiate.
In accordance with the general assumption regarding CED as a high-
Panel Panel Frame 100% 100%
Top Cap 100% 100%
level indicator, the primary study utilized a model of the average
Snap-on Frame 100% 100% United States energy grid to compare OEM and remanufacturing pro-
Chipboard Divider 100% 100% cesses on an equal plane. However, the Steelcase products from Dietz
Acoustic Filler 100% 100% (2005) were built in a Michigan-based manufacturing plant, while
Tack Board 95% 95%
Davies remanufacturing occurs in Albany, NY. Now, Steelcase has
Side Rails 0% 0%
Fabric Upholstery 0% 0% moved much of its current production operations to Mexico. Differences
in the energy grid mixes between these locations—which may cause
File Core/shell 100% 100%
Drawers 100% 100% differentiation in actual impacts between OEM and remanufacturer
operations—are outlined in Table 5. These differences in energy grid

6
M. Krystofik et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

Table 5 as the number of remanufacturing cycles grows. To explore these ef-

Sources of energy in New York (Davies), Michigan (OEM 2005), Mexico (OEM current), fects, this sensitivity analysis assigned sequentially diminishing reuse
and on average in the U.S.
rates to the durable material components most likely to experience
Source NY Mexico MI US Avg. notable degradation over time (Table 6).
Manufacturing processes simulated under these conditions sug-
Petroleum 0.1% 16.4% 0.1% 5.7% gested that even severe increases in material loss (a ten percent or
Natural Gas 47.2% 50.4% 27.2% 17.3%
greater rise in fallout for work surface cores and wall panel tack boards)
Coal 1.3% 12.9% 37.6% 47.0%
Nuclear 27.2% 3.9% 28.8% 19.6% have little overall effect on the overall impact of additional re-
Hydro 19.8% 13.8% 1.3% 8.2% manufacturing cycles (Fig. 7).
Renewable 4.4% 2.5% 4.9% 1.5% Results from the original study suggest that the increase in impact
(in terms of kg CO2e of emissions related to manufacturing energy and
material use) between the first and second remanufacturing cycles is
less than 0.2 kg CO2e—the equivalent of less than one half mile driven
systems affect the severity of impacts in several categories, illustrated in by an average passenger vehicle in the United States (EPA, 2016). In the
Fig. 6. sensitivity scenario, the first remanufacturing cycle creates 0.3 kg CO2e
This differentiation provides insight into the tradeoffs between more in impact than the original scenario, while the gain between the
types of impacts that may be of particular concern depending upon the first and second remanufacturing cycles is approximately 0.9 kg CO2e.
context in which they are considered. For example, Fig. 6 illustrates While this gain estimate is proportionally 4.5 times larger than the
that the New York grid model showed significant impacts in ionizing original scenario, its actual effect is relatively trivial; a Davies employee
radiation and terrestrial ecotoxicity relative to the alternate models, idling in traffic for ten minutes while driving home would likely create
likely due to the state’s reliance on nuclear and natural gas-fueled more CO2e emissions than the increase between these scenarios (NRC,
power systems. In contrast, however, the New York grid clearly in- 2015).
curred the lowest relative impacts in land transformation and particu-
late matter pollution, an effect likely related to the state’s relative in- 4. Discussion and conclusions
dependence from coal. In this, the effect of regional energy grids on
particular environmental impacts is clear, and in at least two impact 4.1. Product life extension
categories mentioned above, using the New York State energy grid
corresponds to greater impacts than were found in the original model. Remanufacturing is a classic product life extension strategy, in some
Irrespective of these tradeoffs, however, the cumulative impact of the cases employed more than once for products with suitable durability.
modeled process across all categories is lower with the New York State However, as technology and consumer preferences change over time,
grid model than with any other region. Indeed, the cumulative impact products of static design will eventually become obsolete, even if they
of the U.S. average model was greatest amongst all sensitivity models, could be economically remanufactured. In these cases, a significant
suggesting that the original study provided a sound worst-case platform portion of the embodied value of a durable but obsolete product—in
of comparison. terms of material, labor, and production energy—is ultimately lost
when the product no longer competes with the contemporary market
3.4.2. Material and is recycled or discarded. Adaptive remanufacturing, however, en-
Material reuse rates in the original study were provided directly by ables remanufacturing designers to update, reconfigure, and customize
Davies, and were assumed to be an accurate representation of real- previously obsolete products to meet present market demands. In this,
world material consumption. However, because no standardized remanufacturers can avoid the risk of obsolescence and continue to
method currently exists for tracking the number of remanufacturing utilize the product’s embodied value until loss of material integrity
cycles a given product has undergone, uncertainty arises with respect to affects the economic viability and environmental preferability of fur-
the impacts of potential increases in the need for material replacement ther remanufacturing. Ultimately, this possibility creates the potential

Fig. 6. Influence of regional energy grid on relative environmental impacts in production of one 16″ × 65″ non-indexed panel.

7
M. Krystofik et al.
Table 6
Material reuse rates (percent) for materials likely to require replacement; original (con-
stant) vs. sensitivity (diminishing) rates.
Component Original (1st/2nd) Sensitivity (1st/2nd)
Work Surface Core 99/99 95/86
Chipboard Divider 100/100 99/97
Acoustic Filler 100/100 99/97
Tack Board 95/95 90/85
Fig. 7. Environmental impacts of increasing material replacement requirements for non-
indexed wall panel and work surface.
to extend product life beyond what is possible with traditional re-
manufacturing.
Combined with the circularity of product flow in which the end-user
cyclically becomes the supplier and the customer for the re-
manufacturer, adaptive remanufacturing as a means of product life
extension has clear potential for economic viability. While this strategy
is plainly regenerative, it must also be environmentally sustainable in
order to succeed in a circular economy—that is, the environmental
benefits of extending product life through multi-cycle adaptive re-
manufacturing must outweigh the environmental costs of doing so.
The results of this LCA suggest that in the case of Davies Office
Furniture, environmental benefits indeed significantly outweigh the
costs. Adaptively remanufactured (i.e. indexed) workspace component
products showed no appreciable difference in CED or material use
impacts compared to those remanufactured back to their original form.
After initial remanufacturing, the independent lifecycle impacts of a
subsequent remanufacturing cycle (performed on an adaptively re-
manufactured product) were effectively equivalent to those of the first
cycle, in contrast to trends in conventional remanufacturing in which
consecutive independent cycles incur notable impact growth. While
Fig. 8. Growth in impacts over multiple independent lifecycles is slowed by adaptive
remanufacturing, creating greater benefits.
8
Resources, Conservation & Recycling xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
independent lifecycle impacts of adaptive remanufacturing are still
likely to grow over subsequent remanufacturing cycles, a slowed rate of
growth compared to traditional remanufacturing enables the possibility
of creating a greater number of additional lifecycles before losing the
economic and environmental benefits relative to virgin production. In
this sense, adaptive remanufacturing increases the magnitude of benefit
that can be gained in multi-cycle remanufacturing when cumulative
environmental impact is considered over the entire combined lifecycle;
the impacts of multiple remanufacturing cycles are both lowered
(Fig. 8) and distributed over a longer period of time.
Adaptive remanufacturing design processes can result in a lowering
impact of subsequent remanufacturing cycles, where we might nor-
mally expect an increased impact due to greater wear or need for
processing.
4.2. Adaptive reman and supply chain circularity
While the economic circularity described in section 4.1 provides a
model for sustainable multi-cycle adaptive remanufacturing, it is clear
that present market preferences favor linear product flow models. In
this sense, adaptive remanufacturing offers a flexibility that enables
market viability even given current preferences. The ability to adapt the
design of incoming EOL products enables remanufacturers to fulfill
demand for a product even if the supply of that product’s OEM core is
uncertain. For example, while the type, condition, and availability of
particular office workspace product cores is unavoidably variable,
adaptive remanufacturing capabilities may allow the remanufacturer to
adapt cores from similar, non-identical systems in order to continue
producing and offering the favored product. Conversely, by allowing
the creation of new product types from a given core family, adaptive
remanufacturing skills can allow remanufacturers to diversify product
offerings even if the supply of cores is nearly homogeneous.
In this, adaptive remanufacturing provides a degree of insulation
against supply chain uncertainty, lending economic viability under
present market structures. And while this viability is critical to success
in contemporary markets, adaptive remanufacturing also holds promise
to serve as a transformative market strategy in pursuit of a more
comprehensive circular economy. In an era of unprecedented venture-
capitalism, companies that begin as a small start-up and grow rapidly
may want additional workspace capacity, with equipment that matches
the original existing décor, to meet the needs of that growth. As product
styles change, they may become unavailable from the OEM; adaptive
remanufacturing allows companies like Davies to fill this market gap by
customizing remanufactured products to individual customer specifi-
cations. This ability not only provides opportunity for Davies re-
manufacturing to grow, but ultimately creates a means to fulfill the
needs of market growth in the broader economy with less resource use,
decoupling economic expansion from unsustainable resource depletion.
While office furniture and workspace products are only one part of an
immense and complex industrial economy, Davies Office serves as a
model for the viability of closed-loop supply chain and circular material
flows that successfully straddles both current markets and a transfor-
mative future. Applied in a broader sense, as the economic and en-
vironmental preferability of remanufactured products becomes clear,
the potential for remanufacturing to become a more prominent com-
ponent of the industrial economy grows.
4.3. Challenges
Although adaptive remanufacturing is in many ways advantageous,
it is, like all novel strategies, subject to inevitable challenges. As with
conventional remanufacturing, the collection of retired products re-
mains a key logistic task, and finding opportunities to reuse material
economically and with minimal additional energy investment is tech-
nically challenging. Still, both of these are absolutely critical in any
kind of remanufacturing, which, in its effort to meet growing market
M. Krystofik et al.
needs while minimizing environmental impacts, is key to enabling the
circular economy model on a broader scale. While adaptive strategies
help to overcome some market challenges common to remanufacturing,
adaptive remanufacturing presents its own unique challenges.
Challenges in core availability, matching availability to market
demand timing, and developing the technical capacity to convert cores
into products that meet current market demands are amplified for third-
party (non-OEM) remanufacturers like Davies Office. For example,
OEMs have access to complete design and manufacturing process in-
formation, and can therefore design their products to support tech-
nology upgrades or configuration changes in accordance with market
changes they not only anticipate, but can also influence to some degree.
In contrast, third-party remanufacturers have limited warning of im-
pending product changes that will affect their core stream, and cannot
make OEM products easier to remanufacture. Further, OEMs also lar-
gely dominate product innovation, as their market domination affords
them greater resources for research and development than independent
remanufacturers. In a case where new office furniture designs experi-
ence innovative, disruptive change (whether in materials or design),
there may thus be a lag in the ability of remanufacturers to replicate
these advancements, as new designs will take several years to enter the
EOL supply stream upon which remanufacturing relies. Overall, despite
the advantages in combatting supply chain uncertainty that adaptive
remanufacturing offers, these difficulties inherent in being an in-
dependent remanufacturer cannot be completely eliminated.
Such variations in the content of the core stream, as well as con-
tinuous changes in market demands, create several other challenges for
which remanufacturers must quickly accommodate. In Davies’ case, the
market required shorter panels than were available in the existing core
stream, and Davies’ adaptive strategies met this need by indexing. If
market preferences at some point return to full-height office panels,
however, adaptive remanufacturing reliant upon a supply stream of
previously indexed panels would require the addition of material to
increase panel height. This, then, would require new design and man-
ufacturing processes, creating new costs for the remanufacturer. In this
particular case, necessary additional material consumption would also
increase the environmental impacts of remanufactured products, re-
ducing the magnitude of its potential benefit relative to virgin products.
More broadly than just panel height, adaptive remanufacturing of-
fers the ability to match the supply stream to the needs of the buyer. In
the case described above wherein an expanding business needs to
match additional equipment to workspace products purchased years
prior, adaptive remanufacturing requires some creativity on the side of
the producer. Actually developing the designs, manufacturing pro-
cesses, and skills to match available core supplies with a customized
design requires significant investment of time and resources in each of
these areas. Allocating resources to development inherently reduces the
amount of resources available to maintain current production, which,
in a currently linear-dominated market, is vital to survival in business.
In addition, a shift from product ownership to product-service-
system models for durable and capital-intensive products has implica-
tions in remanufacturing. This business model is often coupled with
OEM-based remanufacturing activities, and can therein prove a dis-
advantage to third party remanufacturers in both core and market ac-
cess. A transition of this nature in the office furniture market—perhaps
driven by a realization that office products often outlive the businesses
that purchase and use them—may threaten the economic viability of
independent remanufacturing-focused businesses such as Davies Office.
In each of these challenges, however, there remains opportunity. If
market preferences do indeed shift toward taller panels or larger sur-
faces, Davies’ skillset in adaptive remanufacturing prepares it to de-
velop processes to create modular products that can, for example, snap
together. Indeed, observable market trends in the office furniture sector
reflect growing demand for customization more than any potential for
disruptive material innovation that would threaten competitiveness; a
demand that Davies’ capacity to reconfigure existing systems is well-
9
Resources, Conservation & Recycling xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
suited to meet. In addition, Davies is actually well-positioned to become
a part of a shift to product-service system models in the office furniture
sector, rather than be threatened by it. Davies’ direct-from and direct-to
customer logistics models prepare it well for the type of user network
infrastructure necessary to support continuing service and end-of-lease
product collection systems.
While the implications of this research reflect broader opportunity,
it must be acknowledged that in more complex products where tech-
nology advancements are often fundamentally transformative (e.g.
medical imaging equipment or electric vehicle batteries), challenges in
technology adaptation can be so complex that strategies discussed in
this paper may not be feasible. Still, adaption in both feature and form,
as practiced by Davies, can be applicable to other industries whose
products are durable but whose basic functions are relatively static.
Fundamental automotive component housings, for example, may be
used across multiple model years, even as other parts change.
While the exact trajectory of the office furniture industry is complex
and uncertain, this case study aims to provide a model for the benefits
of adaptive remanufacturing strategies in terms of the opportunities it
creates towards achieving a broader circular economy. However, fur-
ther research is still required to understand the best approaches by
which to fully leverage remanufacturing in general in this pursuit.
Studies of market and technology barriers to remanufacturing in other
product sectors can help to identify opportunities for improved design-
for strategies, as well as ways in which adaptive remanufacturing
strategies might promote growth of remanufacturing in new markets.
Acknowledgements
This work was sponsored by the NYS Department of Economic
Development (DED) and conducted by the DED-supported Rochester
Institute of Technology (RIT) NYS Center of Excellence (COE) in
Advanced and Sustainable Manufacturing.
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