Re-Manufacturing of Engineering Machinery Worth Doing

Remanufacturing is a new concept for most domestic engineering machinery manufacturing enterprises and customers. But in overseas mature market, it has become an indispensable part of the industry chain. Remanufacturing is an "after market" tache; when machines become waste, manufacturers call them back and "renew" them with modern technology, after being processed, the machines could be put into production again.

The "renew" hereof is not simply parts replacement or appearance painting. Manufacturers generally need to split, repair, restructure and test the machine, reuse the usable remaining material, energy and added-value of the old machine, and upgrade its performance.

It is clear that remanufacturing has a high requirement on the technical capacity and experience of manufacturers. Manufacturers could truly exert the effectiveness of remanufacturing after they become rightsizing and industrialized.

It is not hard to see that the most worth dreaming parts of remanufacturing industry lie in the process of manufacturing, which has following characteristics: energy saving, environment friendly and recyclable. It is of great importance for improving the development mode transition and structure adjustment of engineering machinery industry, improving the sustainable development ability, and promoting the construction of resource saving and environment friendly society.

In fact, China has become a big engineering machine manufacturer. China turned the deficit of engineering machine trade into surplus since 2006, and in 2007, the total industrial sales volume ranked after the USA and was equivalent to Japan. This means that there has been a favorable quantity of domestic brands in the engineering machinery market. The domestic brands based remanufacturing undoubtedly has huge market opportunities and could bring about marked economic benefits for local enterprises.

Compared with domestic enterprises, relevant enterprises in developed countries have earlier actions. Advanced enterprises in the USA and Japan have established special remanufacturing companies or "overhaul plants" and have realized industrialized remanufacturing. Caterpillar, the world biggest engineering machinery manufacturer, has tens of years' remanufacturing experiences. The company considers the recycling and remanufacturing function of the products from the new product design period. Currently, 20 percent of the company's products are remanufacturing products, and the company has built a dozen of specialized remanufacturing plants throughout the world along with the expansion of production capacity. Caterpillar has set up engineering machinery and engine remanufacturing plants in Shanghai and Yangzhou of Jiangsu Province. In these plants, price of products with "remanufacturing" mark is often only a half or two thirds of new products.

The reporter knew from the interview that there have been lots of customers expressed the willingness to buy remanufacturing products. At present, enterprises like Weichai Power have introduced relevant equipment and built factories for remanufacturing engineering machinery matched engine products.

Considering the increasingly intensified energy resources and the heavier environmental stress, it will be helpful for improving the energy resource utilization ratio of engineering machinery industry, improving the comprehensive competitiveness of the industry and promoting the good and fast development of economic society to develop engineering machinery remanufacturing industry. Enterprises of the circle should better reserve relevant technologies; and it is imperative to build relative systems, like publishing industry access regulations and putting remanufacturing into the national resource recycling list, etc.