Alleviate Data Scarcity in Remanufacturing: Classifying the Reusability of Parts with Data-Efficient Generative Adversarial Networks (DE-GANs)

Remanufacturing, a key element of the circular economy, enables products and parts to have new life cycles through a systematic process. Initially, used products (cores) are visually inspected and categorized according to their manufacturer and variant before being disassembled and cleaned. Subsequently, parts are manually classified as directly reusable, reusable after reconditioning, or recyclable. As demand for remanufactured parts increases, automated classification becomes crucial. However, current Deep Learning (DL) methods, constrained by the scarcity of unique parts, often suffer from insufficient datasets, leading to overfitting. This research explores the effectiveness of Data-Efficient Generative Adversarial Network (DE-GAN) optimization approaches like FastGAN, APA, and InsGen in enhancing dataset diversity. These methods were evaluated against the State-of-the-Art (SOTA) Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Network (DCGAN) using metrics such as the Inception Score (IS), Fréchet Inception Distance (FID), and the classification accuracy of ResNet18 models trained with partially synthetic data. FastGAN achieved the lowest FID values among all models and led to a statistically significant improvement in ResNet18 classification accuracy. At a [1:1] real-to-synthetic ratio, the mean accuracy increased from 72% ± 4% (real-data-only) to 87% ± 3% (p < 0.001), and reached 94% ± 3% after hyperparameter optimization. In contrast, synthetic data generated by the SOTA DCGAN did not yield statistically significant improvements.