Developing and delivering seminars, workshops and events to stimulate actions to boost the remanufacture and reuse movement.

There’s a lot of ignorance about remanufacturing amongst businesses and the public. Traditional ways of doing businesses – and being seen to succeed in business – revolve around sales: i.e making and selling more stuff! Business schools have played on this by teaching tools and techniques that promote this attitude. This is all very well when supply is limited and resources are cheap, but that’s not the world we’re living in.

Here at the CRR we work with leading UK universities, industry and professional organisations to develop a free educational resource to raise awareness of the opportunities for remanufacturing and reuse in the UK. We can deliver these too, or provide support to lecturers and training departments so that they get the most out of the sessions.

Remanufacturing can be good example of Product Service Systems (PSS) and is an excellent case of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and Whole Systems Design (WSD).

Innovative Educational Courses

We’ve trialled this approach at a selection of postgraduate courses at leading universities in the UK; MSc Advanced Technology Management at the University of Wolverhampton and MSc Innovation and Design for Sustainability at Cranfield University.

Delivery can be tailored to each individual audience, from A to MBA level. Some of the subjects we have covered include:

• What is remanufacturing?
• Where is it happening?
• What are the benefits?
• Typical business models
• Design strategies for product life extension
• Operations and logistics
• Incentivising returns

We also have a portfolio of case studies which can be incorporated into the content, depending on the audience interests and is a fantastic way to show how reuse principles work in the ‘real world.’

Stimulating Business Training

Are you a remanufacturer or thinking about remanufacturing? These resources can be adapted to form a training pack for your employees from shop floor to managerial level.

Interactive Industry Workshops

We’ve successfully used our materials to explore remanufacturing issues with industry sectors.

The CRR recently hosted a workshop at IDEA 2008 in Leamington Spa. Fiona Kelday, Dr Andrew King (University of Bristol) and Casper Gray (Wax RDC) delivered a short introduction to remanufacturing, including an overview of design, business models and a case study of the Wax RDC feasibility project, funded by the CRR in 2007. This was followed by a 15 minute interactive session which saw audience members split into 3 groups to discuss whole systems design, core collection and technologies to aid remanufacturing. This prompted some interesting debates and proved to be a useful way to create awareness of the benefits and opportunities in remanufacturing to a new audience.

Similarly, this approach will be of interest to trade bodies and engineering institutions that are looking to engage with their members on topics linked to sustainability and resource efficiency.

If you would like the CRR to host a workshop, training course, lecture or module on remanufacturing and reuse please contact caroline.bartlett@remanufacturing.org.uk to discuss your requirements.

 

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