Even if the economy nowadays is still locked into a linear model of production, tighter environmental standards, resource scarcity and changing consumer expectations are forcing organizations to find alternatives to lighten their impacts. The concept of Circular Economy (CE) is to an increasing extent treated as a solution to this series of challenges. That said, the multitude of approaches and definitions around CE and Life Cycle Extension Strategies (LCES) makes it difficult to provide (Small and Medium Enterprise) SMEs with a consistent understanding of the topic. This paper aims at bridging this gap by providing a systematic literature review of the most prominent papers related to the CE and lifetime extension, with a particular focus on the equipment and machinery sector. A taxonomy was used to define and cluster a subset of selected papers to build a homogeneous approach for understanding the multiple strategies used in the industry, and the standards in maintenance and remanufacturing strategies. As a final research step, we also propose a Strategy Characterization Framework (SCF) to build the ground for the selection of the best strategy to be applied for production equipment life cycle extension on several industrial use cases.

Technological progress is directing the whole world towards a new way of interacting with information and creating value. From this, the industry (both of products and services) needs to keep up with the times and renew itself. There is talk of Industry 4.0, where the digitalization of information through innovative technologies is the key factor for the revolution. In this context, a methodology supporting SMEs in the design and assessment of their I4.0 project portfolio is defined. The methodology adopts a decision making tool exploiting the AHP technique that supports the sorting of the identified projects and the identification of a customized I4.0 roadmap.

Nowadays, Circular Economy (CE) is shifting from a nice-to-have marketing operation to a business development strategy that is central to the restoring and preservation of our natural ecosystem. However, despite motivated promotion efforts, the concrete application of this model at the micro-level is still in its infancy due to several challenges that companies face. One of these challenges is the uncertainty that businesses have in the estimation of the actual impact that adopting CE strategies can have on their activities from an environmental and economic perspective. This work aims to define a conceptual framework to be applied to the Life Cycle Extension Strategies (LCES) of products, which is meant to understand whether the application of a strategy is beneficial from an environmental and economic point of view. In order to address the identified need, a list of indicators to be exploited in the LCES performance analysis has been designed and divided into the two categories of environmental and economic indicators. On the top of this, a calculation methodology that is based on life cycle perspective approaches is applied, which exploits a gap-based approach and thus, compares the effects generated by the linear strategy and those created by the LCES analysis. The evaluation approach is meant to highlight the possible advantages and disadvantages offered by the CE model for product lifecycles. The conceptual framework is tested through an industrial case study and further analysis leading to the improvement of the calculation methodology is discussed.

The reuse and recycling of critical raw materials is limited, as waste electrical and electronic recycling focuses on base and precious metals, and device component reuse is in its infancy. To help to address this issue this paper provides the conceptual design of a Digital Product Passport based circular supply management system. To enable the recovery of critical raw materials at component and material levels for reuse and recycling. The works include an assessment of existing critical raw materials information management and an information needs identification survey, with 10 manufacturers, producer responsibility organisations, collectors and recyclers. The needs were used to generate 14 key product information management processes and exchanges that when implemented form a Digital Product Passport based circular supply management system. Information managed via a physical-digital linkage through individual product tags includes product registrations, materials declarations, life cycle status updates, the sorting of products at collection points based on critical raw material contents, and flagging of products for critical raw materials component extraction. A dataspace-based IT systems architecture is proposed for the implementation of the supply management system taking into account global and European information standards. Finally, key challenges to implement such an IT architecture are discussed.