Circle
Remanufacturing, repairing, repurposing, refurbishing, reusing, ... are all valuable circular strategies. The question is how to be sure that you are exploring and testing the most optimal strategy, specifically for an SME context? With this project, Sirris provides you with an approach and practical tools (technologies, tools ...) to help you limit the risks and increase the chances of success.

Project duration: March 2022 - February 2024

News!

  • 24/10/2022 - Next support group 
  • First casebook available! - Download it here
Context
It is a circular evidence that more value can be derived from products with a longer lifespan, especially in a B2B context. This can be accomplished by maintaining, repurposing, repairing, remanufacturing. You should also be aware that many factors have an impact on the economic success of these life-extending activities. Many manufacturing companies are also faced with these major uncertainties and risks.

Objective
This project is aimed at developing an approach and methods to address all these uncertainties step by step. By only focusing on the challenges that affect your business most at a particular time, you can be sure to be tackling priority issues first. We provide tools to be used according to your needs, including a checklist, diagrams and step-by-step plans.  

Additionally, we intend to familiarise you with a range of useful technologies aimed at supporting the efficiency of remanufacturing operations. A pre-selection of technologies will be made to match your situation.

 

Approach
For the different steps a company needs to make for a new operational activity, specific questions and uncertainties need to be resolved first.  

For each of these phases (see diagram), we combine business experience and theoretical insights with practical tools, to suit SMEs in particular. In the first phase, a casebook of leading and inspiring companies was compiled in which insights are shared to clarify why these cases are successful.

A number of remanufacturing cases were also discussed in the Re-Value webinar. 


Based on the information obtained from the cases and the input from the user group and literature a first draft version was drawn up.

What questions should you ask yourself if you want to explore the potential of remanufacturing for your organisation? We've already drawn up a questionnaire. From this, we can gain insights into the opportunities in terms of business case, product and competences. On top of this, you can also get an idea of the size and impact of your project to realise remanufacturing. 

The aim is to bring all this input together into one ready-to-use tool, so that you can get started by yourself. At the moment, we have the guiding questions and the assessment methodology, but they are not yet integrated. If you already want to get started, please let us know. We will send you the questions and go through the assessment together.

Target Group
SMEs that want to explore the potential of remanufacturing are our target group. Our focus is B2B, rather than B2C, both on manufacturing companies and service companies (maintenance, repair, etc.) that help extend the life of products. 

Reference
COOCK Circle

Financing

Vlaio 
Internal links
More information about circular economy can be found here.

Information

How to get involved in this project:  

  • Please contact us with your specific case for a no-obligation intake: we are looking for two relevant use cases where we want to validate our tools. We are looking for companies that are really getting into remanufacturing and which are willing to test the instruments, tools and technology for their product or in their remanufacturing process.
  • Would you like to be involved from the front row and help gain first-hand insight? Apply to be part of our coaching or consultation group. Contact: Thomas Vandenhaute
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How can we support you?

Want to know more about the Circle project ? Curious about the possibilities for your company? Get in touch with us. Our Circular Economy Project Leader, Thomas Vandenhaute, will be happy to help.