Remanufacturing is the process of disassembly and recovery at the module level and, eventually, at the component level. It requires the repair or replacement of worn out or obsolete components and modules. Parts subject to degradation affecting the performance or the expected life of the whole are replaced. See an example of a professional automotive electronics remanufacturing flow.

Remanufacturing differs from other recovery processes in its completeness: a remanufactured machine should match the same customer expectation as new machines. There are three types of remanufacturing activities, each with different operational challenges.

Many formal definitions of remanufacturing exist in the literature, but in the first published report on remanufacturing by R. Lund (1998), describes remanufacturing as “… an industrial process in which worn-out products are restored to like-new condition. Through a series of industrial processes in a factory environment, a discarded product is completely disassembled. Useable parts are cleaned, refurbished, and put into inventory. Then the product is reassembled from the old parts (and where necessary, new parts) to produce a unit fully equivalent and sometimes superior in performance and expected lifetime to the original new product.”