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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.

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Circular economy (CE) paradigm fosters manufacturing companies’ sustainability taking place through different circular manufacturing (CM) strategies. These strategies allow companies to be internally committed to embrace circular values and to be externally aligned with several stakeholders not necessarily belonging to the same supply chain. Nevertheless, these CM strategies adoption is limited by heterogeneous barriers, among which the management and sharing of data and information remain the most relevant ones, bounding the decision-making process of manufacturers in CM. Moreover, the extant literature unveiled the need to structure data and information in a reference model to make them usable by manufacturers. Therefore, the goal of the present work is to propose a reference model by developing a conceptual data model to standardise and structure the necessary data in CM to support manufacturers’ decision-making process. Through this model, data and information to be gathered by manufacturers are elucidated, providing an overview of which ones should be managed internally, and shared externally, clarifying the presence of their mutual interdependencies. The model was conceptualised and developed relying on the extant literature and improved and validated through academic and industrial experts’ interviews.

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