Digital technologies for the sustainability of circular manufacturing processes: a review

Digital technologies have been recognized as a potential enabling factor for the implementation of circular economy in companies and organizations. They can support manufacturing companies in the redesign of products, processes, business models and supply chains according to the circular economy paradigm. For instance, the Internet of Things can be employed to monitor production data in a way to reduce materials scraps and increase the energy efficiency of production equipment. Big Data analytics can be used to transform product-in-use data into valuable knowledge to inform decision making, e.g. during the design phase of products to increase their modularity and ease disassembly. 3D printing may be adopted for enabling local and on-demand spare parts production for repair purposes. In general, these technologies can enable circularity and help in achieving sustainability benefits in different manufacturing and supply chain processes, ranging from product design to raw material acquisition, production, distribution, maintenance, reverse logistics and end-of-life. Despite an increasing interest on the application of digital technologies for the circular economy, the link between digital technologies, their implementation into different manufacturing and supply chain processes and the generation of sustainability benefits is still at a nascent stage of investigation. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to shed light on how digital technologies can bring sustainability benefits through the application of different R-strategies at different manufacturing and supply chain processes. A systematic literature review is carried out for that purpose, and a final sample of 24 scientific articles has been analyzed. Selected papers have been classified according to (i.) digital technologies investigated; (ii.) circular economy strategies; and (iii.) manufacturing processes. Results have been used to structure a preliminary framework which highlights potential circular economy adoption paths to generate sustainability benefits at different manufacturing processes.