Remanufactured Products: A New Business Model For Light-Vehicle OEMs

This paper will recommend that the Big-3 carve-out a new business unit that focuses upon the delivery of light-vehicles to fleet operators which are classified as “remanufactured”. The remanufacturing process, as applied to this paper, assures that a not-new product has “like-new” condition characteristics of reliability levels, energy efficiencies, operational capabilities, maintainability, safety and others. This new remanufacturing business model is primarily foreseen to:

• Materially increase the profit margin of the light vehicle fleet market segment
• Decrease the market share of imported designed-for-manufacturing components employed in the vehicle production process
• Reduce the manufacturing impact of light-vehicles upon industrial energy consumption and waste generation
• Mitigate the loss of control of the design of a vehicle to the Federal Government

This article will provide an overview of the following nine elements of this new business model:

1. 1
   Who is the customer?
2. 2
   What is the value proposition for the customer?
3. 3
   What are the channels employed to deliver the value proposition to the customer?
4. 4
   How are customer relationships established and maintained with the customer?
5. 5
   What are the revenue streams?
6. 6
   What are the key processes that deliver a value proposition?
7. 7
   What key resources are required to be employed in the processes?
8. 8
   What are the key sources-of-resources employed in the process?
9. 9
   What is the cost structure?

It is the author's belief that the time has come for the Big-3 to think out-of-the-box regarding how they do business. The transition will not be easy, but the anticipated rewards of delivering remanufactured products will be one piece of the puzzle that will be employed to reinvigorate the domestic auto industry.