Managing product recovery operations: The case of automotive engine remanufacturing
Abstract
In operations management, the ‘green supply chain’ is arousing much recent interest and achieving sustainability through operations management is seen as a key challenge. Hence, the field of environmental operations management has gained growing awareness across industry sectors, since operations managers are increasingly facing internal and external pressure to apply environment-friendly measures to their daily activities. Moreover, recent research claims that the field of environmental operations management is largely undeveloped and they highlight a large number of gaps in research. This paper will fill one of these gaps. The underlying case study focuses on car engine remanufacturing as one way of being environmentally responsible while gaining profits from recovering end-of-life products at the same time. This paper will show how recovery operations are undertaken, which obstacles occur and how these obstacles might be overcome.