Remanufacturing is the rebuilding, repairing or restoring of an end-of-life product or part to return it to like-new condition. Remanufactured products or parts should be backed by the same or similar level of warranty as new products. From a customer viewpoint, the remanufactured product can be considered the same as a new product.

Business models based on remanufacturing have been developed across countries, either as distinct companies or as separate departments in manufacturing companies. Remanufacturing allows the return of value and functionality to products or components once they have usefully served their design lifespan. Remanufacturing is widely applied in heavy industries, such as automotive and capital goods, where the value of individual products is generally high and remanufacturing can be economically advantageous. But remanufacturing has economic potential in other manufacturing industries as well, for example in the IT and furniture sectors.

Remanufacturing can become part of a manufacturer's value chain. Discarded products are free of charge, so the input cost is minimal. Manufacturing companies that implement a remanufacturing department can drastically reduce their resource consumption. 

At the most basic level, it is almost always less expensive to remanufacture a given product than to start the manufacturing process from scratch. Savings are accrued throughout the production process, from not needing to source new raw materials, to using simpler and shorter supply chains. The reduced cost of remanufacturing means that like-new products can be sold at a much lower price than newly-manufactured ones. These savings can range from 50 % to 90 % of the price of a comparable new product (Benoy, et al. 2014).

Remanufacturing activities lead to very significant overall resource savings by extending the use of products and avoiding the production of new ones.