Caterpillar European Remanufacturing Centre Shrewsbury – Sustainable industry for the 21st century
Caterpillar Remanufacturing Services (Cat Reman) officially opened its first European Remanufacturing Centre (ERC) on 4 November, 2004 at the former Perkins engines production facility in Shrewsbury, UK. Currently employing 250 skilled personnel, the facility will be the largest engine remanufacturing facility in Europe when the conversion program is complete at the beginning of 2006.
This facility is receiving end-of-life diesel engines and components from Caterpillar dealers and customers across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. It will remanufacture them to the same-as-new specifications before making them available to customers as fully warranted Cat Reman-branded products.
The site is making use of a host of remanufacturing technologies, including environmentally-friendly cleaning, computer-controlled inspection and leading-edge salvage techniques which allows the skilled personnel to take end-of-life components and bring them back to the same standards of quality, efficiency and reliability they offered when new.
At completion, Cat Reman Shrewsbury will have the capacity to remanufacture thousands of items per year for both Caterpillar and other external customers, ranging in size from 1kg water pumps to 1200 bhp power packs for the British Army’s Challenger 2 tanks.
Remanufacturing brings with it tremendous environmental benefits. Caterpillar’s remanufacturing facilities – of which Shrewsbury is one of twelve facilities, four of which are outside of North America – approach a zero landfill model in their reuse and recycling of materials. By weight, 61 percent of the metal in the engines and components returned to Cat can be reused, a process which saves around 85 percent of the energy used in the original manufacturing process. A fifth of the remaining material is recycled in Cat’s own mills and foundries to be used in Cat products; the rest is recycled elsewhere.
Caterpillar’s extensive remanufacturing activities are one of the reasons that the organization has appeared in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index for the past four years.
Remanufacturing is good for Cat business too. Caterpillar has been considering remanufacturability in the design of its products for the last 30 years, and the organization’s remanufacturing processes use the original design specifications and tolerances to ensure that remanufactured product performs just as well and is just as reliable as when it was new. In fact, because remanufactured parts can be upgraded to include the latest advances in technology, remanufactured products may perform better than they did originally.
Caterpillar products are designed with remanufacturing and the ability to upgrade in mind. Caterpillar engineers ensure that, wherever possible, parts can be easily and economically remanufactured to extend their lives. For example, extra material is added to the combustion face of the cylinder head, which allows the face to be milled during the remanufacturing process while still maintaining thickness tolerances. Similar allowances are made in the cylinder head seat pockets, so they can be milled without damaging cooling passageways in the head.
“The European Remanufacturing Center not only adds significant capacity to Cat’s reman capability worldwide, it also gives our customers in Europe, Africa and the Middle East many more options” says Paul Ross, European Market Segment Director of Caterpillar Remanufacturing Services. “This will allow us to focus on the delivery of the products that these customers want and positions us to service the rapidly growing demand for remanufactured equipment in the region.”
Besides more options, Caterpillar’s remanufacturing program delivers straightforward economic benefits for customers – it provides parts of the same quality, durability and carrying the same parts warranty as new but at a fraction of the original price.
Caterpillar is one of the world’s largest remanufacturers, supplying the broadest line of remanufactured engines and components in the industry, and Reman parts are stocked throughout Caterpillar’s worldwide distribution network. In addition to engines and engine components, Caterpillar offers a full line of remanufactured products for its machines.
Apart from the remanufacture of its own products, Caterpillar also offers its sophisticated reman capability to other external customers. The Shrewsbury site is a pioneer in the area, with remanufacturing contracts with the UK’s Ministry of Defense as well as with the rail and automotive industries.
“Through its contracts in the automotive, rail, industrial and defense sectors, Cat Reman Shrewsbury already has acquired valuable reman services experience with external customers,” says Paul Ross. “We will be able to draw on that knowledge and experience as we expand our remanufacturing operations in the future to offer an end-to-end solution across all market segments.”
In addition to the ERC at Shrewsbury, Caterpillar’s European remanufacturing facilities include Wealdstone Engineering, a wholly owned subsidiary, located in Rushden, UK and Eurenov, a joint venture company, with operations in Chaumont, France and Radom, Poland. Combined they remanufacture complete petrol and diesel engines, engine components, gearboxes and injection pumps for automotive and industrial customers.
Caterpillar’s current remanufacturing program processes more than two million units annually, recycling more than 45,000 kg of used products each year. Caterpillar Remanufacturing Services provide OEMs with the ability to leverage Caterpillar’s technology, scale and global reach to compete for higher aftermarket sales and at the same time, lower their warranty costs.
About Caterpillar
For more than 80 years, Caterpillar Inc. has been building the world’s infrastructure and, in partnership with its worldwide dealer network, is driving positive and sustainable change on every continent. With 2004 sales and revenues of $30.25 billion, Caterpillar is a technology leader and the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines and industrial gas turbines.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
High technology processes bring tired products back to life
Caterpillar makes use of a range of high-technology processes to squeeze the maximum efficiency from its remanufacturing operations. Many of these processes were developed in-house by the company’s own engineers and patented by Caterpillar.
At the heart of Caterpillar’s remanufacturing strategy is the process of core management. The ‘core’ in the remanufacturing process is the end-of-life engines and components that come back to Caterpillar from its customers. Core management is Caterpillar’s proprietary process for collection, identification, shipping, tracking and reprocessing of the core material.
Core management includes the information systems needed to manage the complex reverse logistics processes that ensure that all core material is shipped to the locations best equipped to remanufacture it and those with the know-how and technology to remanufacture the maximum possible percentage of the incoming material, minimizing the amount that is sent on for conventional recycling.
Caterpillar’s remanufacturing engineers are constantly refining and revising the core management processes to ensure that the organization collects as much end-of-life material as possible from its customers and remanufactures as much of this material as it can.
Remanufacturing at Shrewsbury begins with the delivery of end-of-life engines and parts from across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Upon arrival, the parts are sorted and separated in preparation for remanufacturing on site, returned to Cat in the US for remanufacture or transferred to an external recycling facility. Parts destined for remanufacturing at Shrewsbury are cleaned in solvent-free water baths before being inspected and repaired as appropriate.
Caterpillar has developed and patented a host of advanced techniques designed to remove wear and damage from used parts, bringing them back up to as-new specifications. Over time, a full array of these techniques will be implemented at the Shrewsbury site. Caterpillar’s remanufacturing processes include:
•Environmentally friendly cleaning techniques to remove carbon and debris
•CNC (computer numerical controlled) machining to repair worn surfaces
•Sleeving to reinstate features
•A range of advanced, proprietary processes for the addition of material to worn and damage parts, including puddle welding, selective recasting, friction welding, wire arc spraying and laser cladding.
Quality and test procedures also form a vital element of the remanufacturing process. State-of-the-art computerized coordinate measurement machines (CMMs) are used to check the dimensional integrity of parts and Caterpillar has a host of advanced non-destructive testing methods at its disposal to evaluate the integrity of critical components. Processes like colorimetric titration, performance tracking and pH control ensure that all parts meet specifications.
Once re-assembly is complete, parts are thoroughly tested, painted and labeled. Engines are run on Caterpillar’s automated dynamometers, which drive them through a highly demanding test cycle designed to expose any potential flaws before the unit is shipped to the customer.
Environmental benefits
The remanufacturing process is increasingly being recognized as an extremely powerful way to reduce the environmental impact of manufactured products. Using remanufactured products not only reduces waste, it also conserves a large portion of the original manufacturing “value add” (the costs of the labor, energy, and manufacturing operations added to the original raw materials).
According to the Product-Life Institute, a Geneva-based research organization, when a simple product like a glass bottle is manufactured, the raw material cost represents less than 5 percent of the total finished cost of the bottle. The other 95 percent is value add. If the bottle is reduced to its fundamental raw materials during recycling – the value add is destroyed. But if the bottle is reused, the original value add is retained.
For a more complex product like an automobile, the value of raw materials that can be recovered through recycling is only about 1.5 percent of the market value of a new car. But if the car’s major components are remanufactured, a large portion of the value add can be retained. In fact, a study done at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology indicates that when automobile parts are remanufactured, about 85 percent of the energy expended during the original manufacturing process is preserved.
In many cases, remanufacturing can actually provide environmental benefits beyond those that might be achieved simply by building a product for a longer life. Remanufactured products can be upgraded to take advantage of the latest technical advances and then returned to the customer possibly performing better than when they were originally built.
According to the latest research* remanufacturing operations in the UK contribute around 5 billion pounds to the UK economy, employ around 50,000 people and recover 270,000 tons of material that might otherwise be disposed in land fills or by less efficient recycling methods.
To date, growth in this sector has been driven by economic rather than environmental imperatives, but as end-of-life and take-back legislation becomes more widespread, the requirement for effective reuse, remanufacturing and recycling strategies is likely to become considerably greater, with substantial opportunities for remanufacturing operations.
“Purchasing remanufactured products from Cat is one of the simplest, most logical ways that a company can reduce its environmental impact and its operating costs simultaneously,” says Bill Springer, vice president of Caterpillar’s Product Support division. “And they can make that purchase with the confidence that every part has been made in our factories, to our exacting standards and with our commitment to safety, quality and reliability.”
Cat Reman Shrewsbury
November 7, 2005
Caterpillar European Remanufacturing Centre Shrewsbury – Sustainable industry for the 21st century
Caterpillar Remanufacturing Services (Cat Reman) officially opened its first European Remanufacturing Centre (ERC) on 4 November, 2004 at the former Perkins engines production facility in Shrewsbury, UK. Currently employing 250 skilled personnel, the facility will be the largest engine remanufacturing facility in Europe when the conversion program is complete at the beginning of 2006.
This facility is receiving end-of-life diesel engines and components from Caterpillar dealers and customers across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. It will remanufacture them to the same-as-new specifications before making them available to customers as fully warranted Cat Reman-branded products.
The site is making use of a host of remanufacturing technologies, including environmentally-friendly cleaning, computer-controlled inspection and leading-edge salvage techniques which allows the skilled personnel to take end-of-life components and bring them back to the same standards of quality, efficiency and reliability they offered when new.
At completion, Cat Reman Shrewsbury will have the capacity to remanufacture thousands of items per year for both Caterpillar and other external customers, ranging in size from 1kg water pumps to 1200 bhp power packs for the British Army’s Challenger 2 tanks.
Remanufacturing brings with it tremendous environmental benefits. Caterpillar’s remanufacturing facilities – of which Shrewsbury is one of twelve facilities, four of which are outside of North America – approach a zero landfill model in their reuse and recycling of materials. By weight, 61 percent of the metal in the engines and components returned to Cat can be reused, a process which saves around 85 percent of the energy used in the original manufacturing process. A fifth of the remaining material is recycled in Cat’s own mills and foundries to be used in Cat products; the rest is recycled elsewhere.
Caterpillar’s extensive remanufacturing activities are one of the reasons that the organization has appeared in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index for the past four years.
Remanufacturing is good for Cat business too. Caterpillar has been considering remanufacturability in the design of its products for the last 30 years, and the organization’s remanufacturing processes use the original design specifications and tolerances to ensure that remanufactured product performs just as well and is just as reliable as when it was new. In fact, because remanufactured parts can be upgraded to include the latest advances in technology, remanufactured products may perform better than they did originally.
Caterpillar products are designed with remanufacturing and the ability to upgrade in mind. Caterpillar engineers ensure that, wherever possible, parts can be easily and economically remanufactured to extend their lives. For example, extra material is added to the combustion face of the cylinder head, which allows the face to be milled during the remanufacturing process while still maintaining thickness tolerances. Similar allowances are made in the cylinder head seat pockets, so they can be milled without damaging cooling passageways in the head.
“The European Remanufacturing Center not only adds significant capacity to Cat’s reman capability worldwide, it also gives our customers in Europe, Africa and the Middle East many more options” says Paul Ross, European Market Segment Director of Caterpillar Remanufacturing Services. “This will allow us to focus on the delivery of the products that these customers want and positions us to service the rapidly growing demand for remanufactured equipment in the region.”
Besides more options, Caterpillar’s remanufacturing program delivers straightforward economic benefits for customers – it provides parts of the same quality, durability and carrying the same parts warranty as new but at a fraction of the original price.
Caterpillar is one of the world’s largest remanufacturers, supplying the broadest line of remanufactured engines and components in the industry, and Reman parts are stocked throughout Caterpillar’s worldwide distribution network. In addition to engines and engine components, Caterpillar offers a full line of remanufactured products for its machines.
Apart from the remanufacture of its own products, Caterpillar also offers its sophisticated reman capability to other external customers. The Shrewsbury site is a pioneer in the area, with remanufacturing contracts with the UK’s Ministry of Defense as well as with the rail and automotive industries.
“Through its contracts in the automotive, rail, industrial and defense sectors, Cat Reman Shrewsbury already has acquired valuable reman services experience with external customers,” says Paul Ross. “We will be able to draw on that knowledge and experience as we expand our remanufacturing operations in the future to offer an end-to-end solution across all market segments.”
In addition to the ERC at Shrewsbury, Caterpillar’s European remanufacturing facilities include Wealdstone Engineering, a wholly owned subsidiary, located in Rushden, UK and Eurenov, a joint venture company, with operations in Chaumont, France and Radom, Poland. Combined they remanufacture complete petrol and diesel engines, engine components, gearboxes and injection pumps for automotive and industrial customers.
Caterpillar’s current remanufacturing program processes more than two million units annually, recycling more than 45,000 kg of used products each year. Caterpillar Remanufacturing Services provide OEMs with the ability to leverage Caterpillar’s technology, scale and global reach to compete for higher aftermarket sales and at the same time, lower their warranty costs.
About Caterpillar
For more than 80 years, Caterpillar Inc. has been building the world’s infrastructure and, in partnership with its worldwide dealer network, is driving positive and sustainable change on every continent. With 2004 sales and revenues of $30.25 billion, Caterpillar is a technology leader and the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines and industrial gas turbines.
**********
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
High technology processes bring tired products back to life
Caterpillar makes use of a range of high-technology processes to squeeze the maximum efficiency from its remanufacturing operations. Many of these processes were developed in-house by the company’s own engineers and patented by Caterpillar.
At the heart of Caterpillar’s remanufacturing strategy is the process of core management. The ‘core’ in the remanufacturing process is the end-of-life engines and components that come back to Caterpillar from its customers. Core management is Caterpillar’s proprietary process for collection, identification, shipping, tracking and reprocessing of the core material.
Core management includes the information systems needed to manage the complex reverse logistics processes that ensure that all core material is shipped to the locations best equipped to remanufacture it and those with the know-how and technology to remanufacture the maximum possible percentage of the incoming material, minimizing the amount that is sent on for conventional recycling.
Caterpillar’s remanufacturing engineers are constantly refining and revising the core management processes to ensure that the organization collects as much end-of-life material as possible from its customers and remanufactures as much of this material as it can.
Remanufacturing at Shrewsbury begins with the delivery of end-of-life engines and parts from across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Upon arrival, the parts are sorted and separated in preparation for remanufacturing on site, returned to Cat in the US for remanufacture or transferred to an external recycling facility. Parts destined for remanufacturing at Shrewsbury are cleaned in solvent-free water baths before being inspected and repaired as appropriate.
Caterpillar has developed and patented a host of advanced techniques designed to remove wear and damage from used parts, bringing them back up to as-new specifications. Over time, a full array of these techniques will be implemented at the Shrewsbury site. Caterpillar’s remanufacturing processes include:
•Environmentally friendly cleaning techniques to remove carbon and debris
•CNC (computer numerical controlled) machining to repair worn surfaces
•Sleeving to reinstate features
•A range of advanced, proprietary processes for the addition of material to worn and damage parts, including puddle welding, selective recasting, friction welding, wire arc spraying and laser cladding.
Quality and test procedures also form a vital element of the remanufacturing process. State-of-the-art computerized coordinate measurement machines (CMMs) are used to check the dimensional integrity of parts and Caterpillar has a host of advanced non-destructive testing methods at its disposal to evaluate the integrity of critical components. Processes like colorimetric titration, performance tracking and pH control ensure that all parts meet specifications.
Once re-assembly is complete, parts are thoroughly tested, painted and labeled. Engines are run on Caterpillar’s automated dynamometers, which drive them through a highly demanding test cycle designed to expose any potential flaws before the unit is shipped to the customer.
Environmental benefits
The remanufacturing process is increasingly being recognized as an extremely powerful way to reduce the environmental impact of manufactured products. Using remanufactured products not only reduces waste, it also conserves a large portion of the original manufacturing “value add” (the costs of the labor, energy, and manufacturing operations added to the original raw materials).
According to the Product-Life Institute, a Geneva-based research organization, when a simple product like a glass bottle is manufactured, the raw material cost represents less than 5 percent of the total finished cost of the bottle. The other 95 percent is value add. If the bottle is reduced to its fundamental raw materials during recycling – the value add is destroyed. But if the bottle is reused, the original value add is retained.
For a more complex product like an automobile, the value of raw materials that can be recovered through recycling is only about 1.5 percent of the market value of a new car. But if the car’s major components are remanufactured, a large portion of the value add can be retained. In fact, a study done at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology indicates that when automobile parts are remanufactured, about 85 percent of the energy expended during the original manufacturing process is preserved.
In many cases, remanufacturing can actually provide environmental benefits beyond those that might be achieved simply by building a product for a longer life. Remanufactured products can be upgraded to take advantage of the latest technical advances and then returned to the customer possibly performing better than when they were originally built.
According to the latest research* remanufacturing operations in the UK contribute around 5 billion pounds to the UK economy, employ around 50,000 people and recover 270,000 tons of material that might otherwise be disposed in land fills or by less efficient recycling methods.
To date, growth in this sector has been driven by economic rather than environmental imperatives, but as end-of-life and take-back legislation becomes more widespread, the requirement for effective reuse, remanufacturing and recycling strategies is likely to become considerably greater, with substantial opportunities for remanufacturing operations.
“Purchasing remanufactured products from Cat is one of the simplest, most logical ways that a company can reduce its environmental impact and its operating costs simultaneously,” says Bill Springer, vice president of Caterpillar’s Product Support division. “And they can make that purchase with the confidence that every part has been made in our factories, to our exacting standards and with our commitment to safety, quality and reliability.”
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