Boosting remanufacturing adoption: proposal of a readiness model and improvement guidelines

Manufacturing is a leading source of global greenhouse gas emissions, making the transition toward net-zero manufacturing essential. This transition requires the adoption of Circular Economy practices, among which remanufacturing is particularly effective because it preserves product value and extends product lifecycles. While remanufacturing is well established in some business-to-business sectors, its adoption remains limited in many others. To support its adoption, Maturity Models (MMs) and Readiness Models (RMs) can be employed, with RMs being more appropriate given this low adoption level. Indeed, while MMs assess the current state of a practice already in place within an organisation, RMs evaluate an organisation's readiness to deploy a new one. However, existing remanufacturing RMs lack extensive validation by industry experts, large-scale application, and a prescriptive perspective. These limitations reduce their generalizability and usefulness, as they describe the current situation without providing empirically grounded improvement strategies. This work addresses these gaps by proposing a remanufacturing RM that is validated by practitioners and academics, applied at scale, and integrates a descriptive dimension with a prescriptive one. The model is tested across 43 organisations, from which empirical improvement guidelines are derived. The RM supports practitioners in assessing their remanufacturing readiness level, identifying weaknesses, and enhancing it.