Blog

Jun 08, 2023

Reuse + Repair + New Parts = Reman

Downtime in the field costs money – and that problem has been magnified as

Downtime in the field costs money – and that problem has been magnified as supply chain issues have made it difficult to find parts. While remanufacturing is not a new concept, the ever-expanding reman product portfolio provides an alternative when deciding how to get your equipment up and running.

As described by Remanufacturing Industries Council, remanufacturing is a comprehensive and rigorous industrial process by which a previously sold, worn or non-functional product or component is returned to "like-new" or "better-than-new" condition and warranted in performance level and quality.

"There's a misconception that remanufactured parts are just repaired parts, which they are not," says Jamie Collins, director of sales and marketing at CNH Industrial Reman. "In reality, remanufactured parts are virtually indistinguishable from new parts. We’re able to take advantage of the hindsight view of understanding the failure modes of parts and we can correct them. This gives end-customers the opportunity to upgrade parts at a lower cost while reducing their liability with an increased warranty."

Reman involves working with your local dealer to choose the replacement options best suited for your failed part or "core" as it's referred to in the reman process. Once the repair decision is made, the dealer places the order for the reman part and then the core is returned to the reman facility after the failed part is replaced. This is often referred to as an exchanged program. Some reman parts, such as electronics, even have a repair and return process where your failed part can be sent in for repair and then returned to you.

"One value reman parts offer to the customer is they are priced roughly 60% to 70% of the cost of new," says Sutton Berry, program manager at John Deere Reman.

The reman process starts by disassembling, cleaning and inspecting core parts. Critical wear parts are replaced with new OEM parts, and failed parts are reclaimed to OEM specs or replaced with new. Components are then tested to original performance criteria.

"Today, with not only John Deere participating in remanufactured products, but lots of other OEMs, there's a much broader understanding of what reman brings to the table by offering components with as good, if not better than new, warranties. The quality of the reman products are just as good as, if not better than, the new products," Sutton says.

Springfield, Mo., is home to CNH Industrial's and John Deere's reman facilities. CNH Industrial's reman operation includes 270,000 square feet, 300 employees and approximately 3,000 unique part numbers. John Deere's reman footprint spans five facilities with more than 600,000 square feet, 500 employees and 2,300 unique part numbers.

The reman product portfolio for both CNH and John Deere includes engines, drivetrains, hydraulics, electrical, fuel pumps and injectors and various other components.

The tooling in John Deere's electronics facility, for example, is designed to test every part for functionality as it was when it was produced new. Technicians X-ray and clean every chip on an electronics board a corner at a time.

If electronics/circuit boards have water or fire damage or have been fried by lightening, they are scrapped. All other units in some form of failure go through a pre-cleaning/pre-prep stage, repairs, four levels of testing and are even updated to the latest specs before returning to the dealer.

At John Deere's assembly facility, it takes technicians anywhere from 3 to 20 hours to remanufacture an engine; that same process would take 40 hours at a dealership.

"In the past 25 years, the industry as a whole has embraced the reman mission," Sutton says. "Reman enables the dealer network to work through more projects and give customers more choices when it comes to machinery repair. The ultimate goal is quicker turnaround time to maximize machinery uptime."

Remanufactured parts help lower the carbon footprint and fulfill companies’ sustainability goals.

For John Deere, that happens in three ways, says Jena Holtberg-Benge, manager, John Deere Reman Business.

"One is through the sustainable use of materials — 65% of the materials we use in our products are sustainable. Second, at the end of their life, 95% of products will be recycled. Third, we want to grow our remanufacturing business by 50% by 2030," Holtberg-Benge says. "We want to play a really integral part in reusing materials and thereby reducing CO2 emissions and greenhouse gases."

In addition to keeping 28 million pounds of raw material from the landfill every year via the core return and remanufacturing process, John Deere measures the impact to the environment using lifecycle assessments. As an example, a reman axle reduces caron dioxide emissions by up to 54% or 2.6 metric tons of CO2 savings, which is equivalent to driving the average passenger vehicle over 6,600 miles or the carbon sequestered by 3.2 acres of forest in one year.

"The remanufacturing process allows us to drive longevity into a part by remanufacturing it back to current OEM specifications or greater," says CNH Industrial's Collins. "By reutilizing the raw materials from the original parts, we lower the cost of ownership of a machine to the end customer while contributing to the circular economy. CNH Reman was able to keep 8.4 million pounds of raw materials out of landfills by remanufacturing parts and components back to OEM specifications in 2021."