Remanufacturing is a value-retention process in the technosphere of a circular economy, producing new products, from components of one or several used parts together with new parts, with the same functionality and performance as the initial produced product. Remanufacturing further includes the option to reach the latest state-of-the-art level via upgrading and updating the remanufacturing components or products. It is in general identified to be ecologically and economically superior to linear new production and to recycling, while simultaneously improving social aspects of sustainability like creating more or at least protect high-quality jobs.

Barriers to remanufacturing and its scaling are a well-researched field, indicating standardization as a major conditional factor to overcome other legal, technical and market barriers. Also, communication with project partners in the remanufacturing industry makes clear that diverse challenges of the industry might can be overcome with standards and that even the industry is lacking a common language, based on common definitions and taxonomy.

The authors initiated a German cross-industry standard in 2022, built up a consortium with members from 5 industry branches, academia, consumer protection and laws, and served as consortium lead during the whole project. In the talk, the main contents, recommendations and concepts of DIN SPEC 91472 “Remanufacturing (Reman) – Quality Classification for Circular Processes” regarding definitions, taxonomy and circularity indicators will be presented, with a special focus on the benefits of the open access pre-standard for the “circular” research community.