# Opportunities for Industry 4.0 to Support Remanufacturing
## 3 Smart Remanufacturing in the Digital Age
### Smart Factory  
Due to the uncertainty involved in the number and quality of cores returned, remanufacturing operations need to incorporate a high degree of flexibility to react quickly and appropriately to various product reconditioning requirements. Smart factories, which enable high flexibility and small batch size production, seamlessly address this complexity issue associated with remanufacturing operations. \"Smart factories\" are essentially at the core of Industry 4.0. \"Smartness\" is achieved using electronic hardware/software, as well as networking of production resources. Compared with traditional manufacturing, more ancillary hardware and software, like RFID tags, barcodes, laser markers, sensors, as well as communication infrastructure, will be embedded into the factory to enable machines to collaborate with each other using intelligent analytics. In the future, in a smart remanufacturing environment, machines could obtain incoming core information through scanning a barcode attached to the core, adapt the remanufacturing operations through self-optimization and smart fixturing capabilities, update the process-related information to a database via wireless transfer, and store remanufacturing knowledge gained from experience. This could enable a substantial reduction of the labor force and lessen the dependency on high-skilled operators. In the meanwhile, with various types of sensors embedded into equipment and cells, data from the manufacturing process could be retrieved and sent for real-time analysis. This would support the early detection of machines or cell failures and allow preventative strategies to be implemented to avoid unplanned maintenance and catastrophic failures. Information associated with the product manufacturing data could also been recorded and stored as part of the product life-cycle data. In addition, energy-efficient remanufacturing processes could also be achieved through collecting real-time energy consumption data and implementing an energy management system accordingly. Further innovative technologies, such as additive manufacturing, 3D scanning, automated guided vehicles, inspection drones, hybrid manufacturing/process [14; 15], and augmented reality tools, will continuously drive down the cost of remanufacturing operations while also delivering substantial improvements in the quality of the repaired product. Taking aerospace remanufacturing as an illustration, worn airfoils can sometimes be repaired using the laser metal deposition technique, an additive process where metal powder is melted by a computer numerical control (CNC) laser on a robot arm to form a direct fusion-bonded deposit on the blades. This technology offers the precision and low heat input necessary to successfully achieve such restoration, compared to more conventional fusion welding processes. In addition, sustainability needs to be an important factor to be considered while adopting these advanced technologies. The life-cycle assessment method could be conducted to gauge the environmental impact of these new technologies to make sure the advancement is not only technically achieved but is also environmentally friendly [16].