GB/T 28619-2024Remanufacturing - Terminology (English PDF)

Foreword

GB/T 28619-2024 was issued on 29 September 2024 by the State Administration for Market Regulation of the People's Republic of China and the National Standardization Administration, and takes effect on 1 April 2025. The /T marks it as a recommended national standard.

The document carries an official English translation published by openstd; where the English and the Chinese differ, the Chinese original governs.

The standard replaces GB/T 28619-2012 in whole. Its structure is deliberately short: after the scope and a normative references clause, the vocabulary is divided into just two clauses, basic terms and related terms, followed by a bibliography and an alphabetical index.

1 Scope

The Chinese national vocabulary for remanufacturing - the industrial practice of taking a worn or obsolete product, professionally repairing or upgrading it, and returning it to at least the performance of a newly manufactured one. Remanufacturing is not repair and it is not recycling, and the whole point of a terminology standard here is to hold that line: a repaired machine is restored to working order, a recycled one is reduced to material, while a remanufactured one is brought back to or beyond original specification and can be sold and warranted as such. That distinction carries real commercial and regulatory weight in China, where remanufacturing is promoted as circular-economy policy and where what may be labelled and sold as a remanufactured product is a matter of compliance rather than marketing. The document defines the basic terms of the field - remanufacturing itself, the core, restorative and upgrade remanufacturing - and then the related terms that surround the process. It applies to remanufacturing research, design and engineering implementation, and to the related services and management. It replaces GB/T 28619-2012 and, at eight pages of vocabulary plus a bibliography and an index, it is deliberately compact.

Clause 1 is two sentences. The document defines terms and definitions related to remanufacturing, and it applies to remanufacturing research, design and engineering implementation, and to the related services and management.

2 Normative references

The clause is present but empty by design: the standard states that there are no normative references in the document. Being a pure vocabulary, it imports no requirements from other standards, although individual definitions do carry SOURCE notes attributing them to other documents - the definition of remanufacturing itself, for instance, is attributed to GB/T 28612-2023.

3 Basic terms

The core of the standard, occupying pages 1 to 4, and the clause that carries the definitions everything else depends on.

Remanufacturing is defined as the process of professionally repairing or upgrading products that are no longer in use because of functional damage or technical obsolescence, such that their functions, quality characteristics, safety, environmental performance and economy reach or exceed the level of a newly manufactured product of the original model. Two things are doing the work in that definition: the two admitted reasons for a product leaving service, and the benchmark - not merely serviceable, but at or above new-product level on five named criteria at once.

The core is the object that goes into the process: a product unable or unsuitable for continued use because of functional damage, technical obsolescence or expiry of service life, but which still contains reuse value and meets remanufacturing requirements. It is the term that separates what can be remanufactured from what can only be scrapped.

The clause then splits the process in two by outcome. Restorative remanufacturing brings the quality characteristics of the remanufactured product back to the level of a newly manufactured product of the original model. Upgrade remanufacturing goes further, giving the remanufactured product more functions or higher quality than the original model had. Further basic terms follow in the same pattern of term, definition and explanatory note.