Sensors can provide “more information about what happened in use and manufacturers can make better decisions about whether it’s worth remanufacturing,” said Michael Thurston, the technical director at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Golisano Institute and a professor at the school. “If there’s a heat problem, you might suspect damage, but the sensors can provide additional information about what can be reused.”

But manufacturers say that the internet of things is only beginning to change remanufacturing. “IoT offers a huge opportunity as long as it’s connected with the original part and doing things like predictive failure analysis,” said Peter Anderson, the vice president of global supply chain for Cummins Inc., an engine and power systems company. “It is more pervasive in the aerospace industry, but we’re not doing it today.”

Additive technology — such as 3-D printing — is, however, increasingly used to fabricate parts that a company may not store, said Ms. Holtberg-Benge, who is based in Springfield, Mo. “To make a part by the original process in low volume can be expensive, so manufacturers are increasingly using 3-D printed parts.”

As the technology has improved, the use has become more sophisticated. “There are pieces we couldn’t manufacture but could only create with a 3-D printer,” said Mr. Anderson, based in Columbus, Ind. “It enabled our designers to design unconstrained.”

There are concerns that selling remanufactured products could cut into sales of companies’ new inventories, since they can cost from 20 percent to 50 percent less than a new product. “But it’s actually a huge opportunity,” said Joe Iles, the circular design program lead of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a British organization that promotes the circular economy. “There are already secondhand sales for many products, and the person who buys a remanufactured item might not pay the extra to buy it new.”