Mitsutaka Matsumoto
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology （AIST)
Dr. Mitsutaka Matsumoto is a senior researcher at Advanced Manufacturing Research Institute (AMRI) of National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan. He has been working on R&D in product eco-design, remanufacturing, and product service systems. He has experiences of working in industry from 2002 to 2006, working with the Japanese government (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI)) from 2012 to 2013, and researching as a visiting scholar at Rochester Institute of Technology in 2014.
Product reuse, refurbishment, and remanufacturing are critical elements in realizing sustainable production and society. These activities are particularly important in emerging economies where consumption of products, raw materials, and energy is growing rapidly. The presentation shows the situations of the activities in emerging economies in Asian region, and the study focused on the activities in photocopier industry where remanufacturing has been undertaken actively, and product service systems (PSS) also prevail in high levels. Although remanufacturing and PSS in photocopier industries have been studied in numbers of literature, most of them highlighted the cases in developed countries. The situations and contexts in developing countries are significantly different from those in developed countries, and to discuss the sustainability from the global perspectives, the situations in developing countries need to be paid attentions to.
The authors conducted case studies in four countries in Asia, namely, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore. The cases in developed countries were also studied to contrast with those in developing countries. We conducted interviews with total of eight companies which include original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in Japan, and OEMs’ sales companies and independent refurbishers (IRs) in Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore.
The interviews were intended to clarify at least the following issues: 1) current situations of the markets of remanufactured/refurbished products in the countries; 2) companies’ channels to collect used products; 3) companies’ efforts to increase efficiency of remanufacturing/refurbishing processes; and 4) major customer segments which purchase remanufactured/refurbished products.
The results included the following. First, the market situations are significantly different in the four countries. In Japan, OEMs’ remanufactured products comprise about 15% of the market and the rests are new products, whereas in Indonesia, for example, refurbished products comprise 60 to 70% of the black and white photocopier market. Second, OEMs take back over 80% of end-of-life products in Japan, but it is not the case in other countries. IRs in Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore import used products from developed countries such as US and Australia where OEMs cannot collect end-of-life products as much as in Japan. The restrictions of imports and exports of used products which increase in recent years comprise the big barriers for these businesses, although the restrictions have effects of preventing the e-waste problems. We describe the findings in more detail in the presentation.
Based on the results of the case studies, we developed several scenarios for future international remanufacturing systems. The requirements of effective international remanufacturing systems in the future include: material consumption is saved; customer values are maximized – i.e. products are provided with reasonable price, and the qualities of products are high; jobs are created by the businesses; economic profits are appropriately allocated in particular between OEMs and IRs; and environmental pollutions (e-waste problems) are prevented. We present several scenarios.
• Industrial ecology in developing countries , • Business and industry practices / case studies , • Sustainable consumption and production
