THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE CARPATHIAN EURO-REGION SPECIALISTS IN INDUSTRIAL SYSTEMS 7 th EDITION REMANUFACTURING – A CHALLENGER OF ENGINEERING Dinu DARABĂ 1 , Marius ALEXANDRESCU 2 , Marius COSMA 3 1 Associate Lecturer Eng. and Economist, 2,3 Lecturer PhD. Eng., North University of Baia Mare, 62A Dr. V. Babeş street, Romania 1 ddinu_dmd@yahoo.com, 2 mariusa_ubm@yahoo.com , 3 marius.cosma@ubm.ro Abstract: Remanufacturing is the activity which combines the profitability and the benefits of the sustainable development, trough reducing the landfills and virgin raw material consumption, energy and specialized labour used in production. Remanufacturing should be approached under two aspects: the remanufacturing of the technological equipment that is during exploitation or in preservation, and which were not designed for remanufacturing and approaching the remanufacturing in the conception stage of the technological equipment. Key words: remanufacturing, durable development, structure element, life cycle, etc. 1. INTRODUCTION Remanufacturing is defined as an industrial process in which used products or products at their end-of-life are restored to a like-new condition. Through a series of industrial processes in a factory environment, a discarded product is completely disassembled. Usable parts are cleaned, refurbished, and put into inventory. Then the new product is reassembled from the old one, and where necessary with new parts, to produce a fully equivalent – and sometimes superior – in performance and expected lifetime to the original new product. Like-new quality is sometimes not enough to make remanufactured products attractive alternatives to new products. Therefore, the process of remanufacturing can be associated with upgrading, allowing the remanufactured product Remanufacture returns a used product to like-new condition; it is a process of recapturing the value added to the material when a product was first manufactured. Remanufacture results in reduced energy and material use, and production cost reductions. 2. APPROACHING WAYS FOR REMANUFACTURING The remanufacturing should be approached under two aspects, in the present world economic circumstances[3]: 1. remanufacturing of the technological equipment that were not conceived for remanufacturing, which are during exploitation or in preservation; 2. approaching the remanufacturing in the conception stage of the technological equipment. In order to enhance the remanufacturing activity, a series of requirements are imposed for the technological equipment that are to be remanufactured, thus requirements have to be respected since the product conception and design. These are the main characteristics necessary for a product to be remanufactured: ► those technological equipment parts which have not the properties of dissipation or breaking up, can be the object of the remanufacturing process. ► the required technology exists for bringing about the product to the original shape,condition and operability.