Sideshaft Remanufacturing – Part 1: At a Glance

The European Green Deal identifies the adoption of a circular economy and resource efficiency as critical to the goal of climate neutrality by 2050, while also reducing the associated impact across a vehicle’s life cycle. For the automotive manufacturing sector – an industry with a complex supply chain needed to meet the demand of cars, which on average contain approximately 30,000 parts – this drive towards circularity asks new questions of designers and engineers.

To achieve the high performance expected of today’s cars, every one of these parts needs to be manufactured with remarkable precision and to exact tolerances, often in configurations that are unique to a given vehicle. As such, even if they are in perfect working order, many of these parts cannot be recycled and reused because their counterparts in different vehicles are not directly interchangeable. However, this is not the case for all components within a vehicle.

Individual part ‘remanufacturing’ offers a potential route to meet the precise and exacting component requirements for new and used vehicles, as well as driving down emissions. With vehicle Lifecycle Assessments (LCAs) becoming increasingly stringent, this approach is increasingly needed for companies to deliver their sustainability targets.

A good case in point can be found in sideshafts. Responsible for transmitting high levels of torque and power from a vehicle’s engine to its wheels, a sideshaft is a particularly high workload component which undergoes large amounts of pressure and stress over its lifespan.

As a well-proven technology that is commoditised and interchangeable, in many instances a new sideshaft is produced when an old component could be refurbished and remanufactured, while still adhering to the same strict quality standards demanded of newly manufactured products.

Considering what remanufacturing looks like, mechanical staples like sideshafts allows us to gather insights into the expectations and processes needed to help the automotive industry embrace the circular economy.

Many customers are moving away from single-use products altogether, so the remanufacturing process is becoming increasingly essential. For this to demand to be met, it must be considered from the initial design phase of a new product.

GKN Automotive’s approach to remanufacturing supports the environmental and economic opportunities that the circular economy offers to automotive and manufacturing.