Assessing relations between Circular Economy and Industry 4.0: a systematic literature review

Abstract

Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and Circular Economy (CE) are undoubtedly two of the most debated topics of the last decades. Progressively, they gained the interest of policymakers, practitioners and scholars all over the world. Even if they have been usually described as two independent research fields, there are some examples presenting overlaps between these topics, represented by hybrid categories like Circular I4.0 and Digital CE. Starting from these two perspectives, an innovative framework both highlighting the links between I4.0 and CE and unveiling future research fields has been developed. Basing on one of the two perspectives, results show as it is possible to enhance a set of different relations. Depending on a dedicated area of either CE or I4.0 it is possible to see the prevalence of some I4.0 technology than others. However, the influence of I4.0 technologies on CE is always verified.

Integrating Virtual Reality and Digital Twin in Circular Economy Practices: A Laboratory Application Case

“…Trying to put together the sustainability-oriented and technology-oriented views under the same umbrella, the concept of Smart Sustainability has been proposed by experts as a new way for making goods and managing production processes in a more sustainable way by exploiting smart technologies. As pointed out by the authors of reference [5], experts consider four main ways to describe the relation between I4.0 and the CE:…”

“…CPSs integrate a cyber space with physical processes and objects by connecting machine tools and devices as a network, thus monitoring and exchanging real-time data for decision making. They represents a new way to enable either better lifecycle management of products and services (e.g., for maintenance reasons) or to optimize remanufacturing practices or multi-agent systems for managing the extraction of natural resources [5]. This way, resources (products, material, energy) can be allocated efficiently based on intelligent cross-linked value creation modules [22].…”

“…In addition, IoT also provides process-related data by optimizing remanufacturing and recycling practices and enabling better production planning and control [24,28]. For these reasons, IoT adoption in CE practices can enable (i) new waste management strategies, (ii) improvement of the processes circularity level, and (iii) creation of smart industrial environments or dynamic feedback control loops [5,30,31].…”

“…Together, CE and I4.0 are forcing companies to re-think their business strategies and models, since both these strategies are complementary, and synergistic effects can be established between them [4]. However, despite many works dealing with the interaction between I4.0 and CE [5], the way in which digital technologies can favor the transition toward CE has been rarely assessed in a real context [6]. Previous studies [4] have looked at various aspects of the CE and digital transformation, structuring a work frameworks under the principles of the CE and the pillars of sustainability and proposing the development of standardization of the CE as a paradigm for sustainability under the potential offered by digital transformation.…”

A Maturity Model for Logistics 4.0: An Empirical Analysis and a Roadmap for Future Research

“…Consistently with existing scientific definitions, Logistics 4.0 represents the logistical system that enables the sustainable satisfaction of individualized customer demands without increasing costs [5]. Logistics 4.0 changes the existing solutions already adopted in traditional logistics, and introduces new enabling technologies, such as the cyber-physical systems (CPSs), which allow us to realize the networking and automation of storage system transportation, and decentralized software control [2,3,5,6]. In other cases, the support of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology allows linking physical objects to enable real-time data visualization in order to automate the logistics flows [7-9] under either an uncertain or a given demand [10], and when considering different kind of materials [11].…”