Abstract
The digital transformation of manufacturing firms, in addition to making operations more efficient, offers important opportunities both to promote the transition to a circular economy and to experiment with new techniques for designing smarter and greener products. This study integrates Industry 4.0 technologies, smart data, Life Cycle Assessment methodology, and material microstructural analysis techniques to develop and apply a circular eco-design model that has been implemented in the Italian ceramic tile manufacturing industry. The model has been initially adopted in a simulation environment to define five different scenarios of raw material supply, alternative to the current production one. The scenarios were then validated operationally at laboratory scale and in a pilot environment, demonstrating that a proper selection of raw material transport systems significantly improves the environmental performance of the ceramic product. Both the results of the laboratory tests and of the pre-industrial experiments have demonstrated the technological feasibility of the solutions identified with circular eco-design, enabling the re-engineering of the ceramic product as the fifth of the 6Rs of the circular economy.
Highlights
The manufacturing world has taken up the challenge of the fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0 [1], which is based on two foundations: automation [2] and data [3]
Already performing well from the environmental point of view, as highlighted in the literature [11,47], as an area of improvement and in a circular economy perspective, this research focused on the R of the redesign of the ceramic product to make it even more environmentally performing
The transition to the circular economy can be enabled by the development of digital technologies related to Industry 4.0, as they facilitate process and product innovation thanks to their high potential for tracking resource consumption and emissions
Summary
The manufacturing world has taken up the challenge of the fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0 [1], which is based on two foundations: automation [2] and data [3]. Industry 4.0 pushes manufacturing industries to make their processes minimize waste: this transition to efficiency links Industry 4.0 with the goals of the circular economy [6] This relationship becomes increasingly evident as companies define new strategies to achieve more ambitious environmental sustainability goals [7]. To ensure successful optimization of manufacturing operations and improve production efficiency, an integrated MES (Manufacturing Execution System), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), and PLC (programmable logic controller) system was implemented. Thanks to these digital systems, it is possible to manage, monitor, and coordinate the execution of real-time physical processes
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