A Systematic Literature Review on Data and Information Required for Circular Manufacturing Strategies Adoption

Federica Acerbi,Sergio Terzi,Marco Taisch,Claudio Sassanelli

doi:10.3390/su13042047

Abstract

In the extant literature, circular economy (CE) is considered a driver for sustainable development of the manufacturing sector, being it an industrial paradigm aiming at regenerating resources. CE is transferred to manufacturing companies through the adoption of different Circular Manufacturing (CM) strategies (e.g., recycling, remanufacturing, etc.). Nowadays, manufacturers are struggling to implement these strategies to limit their resource consumption and pollution generation. To enable their adoption, the extant literature unveiled the importance to control along the entire value chain different types of resource flows (i.e., material, energy, and information). Nevertheless, while for material and energy management some advancements were achieved, information management and sharing remains one of the major barriers in adopting these strategies. The present work, through a systematic literature review, aims to identify the relevant information and data required to support the manufacturer’s decision process in adopting and managing the different CM strategies to pursue the transition towards CM. Furthermore, based on the results obtained, this research proposes a theoretical framework. It elucidates the four main areas to be managed by manufacturers in adopting CM strategies and it provides to the manufacturer an overview of what should be updated and upgraded inside the company to embrace CM strategies.

Highlights

This systematic literature review (SLR) showed a high correlation among the data and information necessary to adopt each strategy, strengthening the possibility to exploit the same data for the concurrent adoption of different
This research operated an SLR intending to identify and classify all the relevant information, data, and supportive technologies and tools, required to aid manufacturers to approach to Circular Manufacturing (CM) and manage the CM strategies
The review has been operated for each CM strategy identified in [13], analysed through four main categories

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. The last century has been characterised by an immoderate resource consumption trend followed by an uncontrollable increase of CO2 emissions, which, if not stopped, might lead to planet collapse. Research dating back to the 1960s perceived this issue as a great problem to be addressed by society as a whole [1]. While the concept behind sustainability is quite old, the term “sustainability” started to appear in the literature in the late 1970s [2]

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Conclusion