Product Lifetime Extension Case Study: Caterpillar

This case study presents a successful business strategy to extend products lifetime. The aim with these case study is to inspire and encourage organisations to shift to more circular models, to improve their business models towards prolonging or extending a product’s lifetime.

This study focuses on manufacturing done by Caterpillar. Caterpillar is one of the world’s remanufacturing leaders, a strategy that focuses on extending a product’s lifetime to its maximum capacity and, consequently, use its resources in a more effective way.

This case study is related to The Long View Report in two main aspects:

• Removal of legal barriers for refurbishment and remanufacturing, because the biggest challenge reported about the implementation of this business model was the lack of government regulations that support remanufactured goods.
• Alternative business model, since the second barrier pointed by Caterpillar was the lack of acceptance of remanufactured products mainly in developing countries, making this business model difficult to be implemented – but research points to this also being a problem in developed countries.