IS REMANUFACTURING ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY?

摘要

Remanufacturing is believed to offer both financial gain due to cost saving and environmental benefits due to the reuse of used products. In this paper, we formulate a stylized model to study remanufacturing in the context of product design to identify the conditions under which remanufacturing is more profitable. More importantly, we bridge the gap between profit maximization and environmental friendliness to ascertain the extent to which the two are complementary and to identify key factors of compatibility when they are not complementary. Our results show that efficient cost structure and strong consumer preference for remanufacturing benefit the firm but do not necessarily the environment.