The explosive growth of the global market for Carbon-Fiber-Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) and the lack of a closing loop strategy of composite waste have raised environmental concerns. Circular economy ...studies, including Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC), have investigated composite recycling and new bio-based materials to substitute both carbon fibers and matrices. However, few studies have addressed composite repair. Studies focused on bio-based composites coupled with recycling and repairing are also lacking. Within this framework, the paper aims at presenting opportunities and challenges of the new thermosetting composite developed at the laboratory including the criteria of repairing, recycling, and use of bio-based materials in industrial applications through an ex ante LCA coupled with LCC. Implementing the three criteria mentioned above would reduce the environmental impact from 50% to 86% compared to the baseline scenario with the highest benefits obtained by implementing the only repairing. LCC results indicate that manufacturing and repairing parts built from bio-based CFRP is economically sustainable. However, recycling can only be economically sustainable under a specific condition. Managerial strategies are proposed to mitigate the uncertainties of the recycling business. The findings of this study can provide valuable guidance on supporting decisions for companies making strategic plans.
Starting from mid ‘90s, Eco-efficient Product Service Systems (PSSs) were indicated in literature as enablers toward a more sustainable and resource-efficient industry through re-use and ...remanufacturing. In this regard, academicians and practitioners outlined several advantages (environmental and economic) but also many barriers hindering their implementation, such as market acceptance and economic sustainability. Thus, the diffusion of re-use and remanufacturing PSS is currently limited and mainly restricted to markets accepting also out-dated products (e.g. B2B or emerging countries). To cope with this limitation, product upgrade in re-manufacturing was recently introduced. Upgrade cycles allow embedding technological innovation into products while remanufacturing, thus reaching advanced performances and satisfying evolving customers’ preferences over time. If coupled with the offering of advanced services, remanufacturing with upgrade would open the way to new disruptive PSSs able to revolution customers’ consumption behaviour, as well as the manufacturing business model of companies. The new remanufacturing with upgrade business models will make remanufacturing one of the main pillars of companies’ business value generation, allowing improved management of technology cycles and of products obsolescence. Thus, overall economic and environmental benefits will be maximised. However, the implementation of such business models represents a challenge for manufacturers. The evolution from a pure manufacturing towards a manufacturing/remanufacturing company, together with the transition from a product to a service-based offering, entails considerable changes in all the business model variables. Drawing on the theory of business model innovation process, incremental or radical innovation paths can be hypothesised for this transition. Despite the focus of recent research on Product Service Systems and on Circular Economy, remanufacturing-with-upgrade business models are rarely cited in literature and there is limited empirical evidence of companies having embraced them. To set the research framework in alignment with previous theory, this paper proposes a structured definition and configuration of innovative remanufacturing-with-upgrade business models. By looking at existing examples of companies having undertaken this type of business model innovation, different typologies of remanufacturing and upgrade business models are proposed. Companies were classified according to the identified PSS typologies and conclusions are derived, together with future research perspectives.
In the current state of the art, textile products and materials generate a significant environmental impact since they are not managed under a circular economy paradigm. It is urgent to define new ...sustainable paths in the textiles industry by setting up materials, technologies, processes, and business models to reuse and recycle textiles production waste and End-of-Life textiles. In this direction, taking advantage of textile-related materials, especially from renewable and waste resources, for depollution purposes appears very promising since it enables re-use, but it also supports secondary applications with a high sustainability impact. This review collects and describes possible adsorption, filtration and purification capabilities of (i) various functionalized textiles, (ii) biopolymers constituting the natural fibers (cellulose, keratin, fibroin) and (iii) textile-derived active carbons and biochar, in order to provide a structured framework for the systemic exploitation of the depollution potential of waste textiles. The correlations among the type of textile materials, the physical-chemical treatments, and the characteristics influencing the performances of such materials as decontaminating tools will be underlined.
Circular economy (CE) implementation requires the transition from linear business models (BMs) to circular ones, with related uncertainties and multi-disciplinary risks, which often discourage ...organisations. However, there is still a lack of understanding of risks associated with this process. This work thus aims to identify, classify and prioritise key risk factors for innovative circular BMs in order to enable the development of appropriate risk management strategies.
A fuzzy Delphi method was tailored to assess the risk factors obtained from the literature and was applied to the industrial case of composite materials. 24 major risk factors for innovative circular BMs were identified and classified into six categories. The probability and impact of the risk factors were evaluated by experts and the risk factors were then ranked by calculating their risk scores. The resultant major risks appeared to be related to the external context in which organisations operate. Among those risks, the greatest were those generated by take-back systems and low customers’ acceptance of CE products.
This research is the first to address risks for circularity in a structured way and contributes to the field of CE by providing an extensive list and classification of risk factors for innovative circular BMs as they are perceived by industry, acting as a reference for academics and practitioners. Furthermore, it provides the first evaluation and prioritisation of risk factors within the CE domain, highlighting critical risks within the specific industrial context of composite materials and suggesting action priorities for the establishment of circular BMs.
•Structured list and categorisation of risk factors for circular business models.•Systemic approach for risk assessment spanning across multiple disciplines.•Ranking of risk factors in the case of composite materials industry.•‘Take-back systems’ identified as the most critical risk factor.•‘Market’ risks are the most critical risk category.
Product Service Systems are indicated in literature as enablers toward a more sustainable and resource-efficient industry. In particular, the potential of Eco-efficient PSS to promote more ...sustainable industrial practices, such as re-use and re-manufacturing, has been discussed outlining the possible environmental advantages deriving from a more intense use of resources and emphasizing the economic benefits for producers as well. In recent years, together with barriers hindering the implementation of such strategies, authors started discussing also some ‘rebound effects’ that could limit the expected re-manufacturing environmental benefits, such as the obsolescence of re-manufactured products, especially in case of fast technology cycles. To overcome these criticalities and to target high-value customers segment, the concept of product upgrade in re-manufacturing has been introduced. Upgrade cycles would allow embedding technological innovation into products, to reach advanced environmental performances over time and to satisfy evolving customers’ preferences. However, the concept of product re-manufacturing with upgrade has been treated mainly theoretically with limited evidence of industrial applications in PSS. Producers currently engaged in established remanufacturing practices are mainly big manufacturers of durable or long life-time products, in particular in the B2B sector, while only few pioneering cases of PSS offering product upgrade are cited in literature, mainly referring to B2C. To contribute to the progress of the state of the art and to move from theory to industrial application, this article takes a business model perspective for the implementation of remanufacturing with upgrade PSS. A coherent configuration value proposition, supply chain and reverse logistics, revenue model and ownership scheme is proposed, aiming at addressing the major criticalities and barriers encountered in the literature for the implementation of remanufacturing strategies. The producer will play a central role in the business model, since he has the knowledge and capability to conceive product's design and supply chains suited to perform remanufacturing and upgrade cycles. Potential benefits, and unsolved barriers to the implementation of the proposed business model are finally introduced in order to suggest future research directions.
The need of undertaking effective actions against the climate change is pushing industrial companies to find new business models and technological solutions to reduce the resource utilization and the ...waste production. In this context, several companies are moving towards servitization, that has been proved as a promising strategy to enable sustainable business models in a wide spectrum, namely encompassing environmental, economic and social aspects. Nevertheless, companies lacks of tools for evaluating different servitization models with a clear view of economic and environmental benefits. This paper presents a model to estimate the profitability of servitization opportunities by combining economic Net Present Value index and environmental impacts estimation. The model is targeted on the steel sector, for which a preliminary application has been developed and is discussed in the paper. The results show that adopting different servitization business models, several benefits could be exploited both from providers and customers.
In the current competitive scenario, industrial companies experience frequent unexpected changes in production demand. To cope with this, they often opt for investments in manufacturing technologies ...which embed extra-flexibility that is rarely utilized and, consequently, affects financial and operational performance. Innovative flexibility-oriented business models based on innovative service value propositions could increase manufacturers competitiveness in turbulent environment and could represent a competitive factor for systems suppliers. Their industrial implementation requires the optimization of manufacturing flexibility over the lifecycle of a system and the quantification of economic performance for customers and suppliers in order to mage risks and to shape sustainable contractual agreements. In this paper, stochastic configuration methods to design focused-flexibility production systems are presented as a promising methodological enabler of new flexibility-oriented business models. An industrial case demonstrating the potential value of these methods is discussed. Future research developments are finally outlined.
In recent years Mass Customization has been considered as a proper strategy to provide customers with individualized products with a reasonable price. Meanwhile, the trends of aging population and ...rapid technological evolution have initiated the interest of healthcare sector to production of customized medical devices. Pursuit of such a strategy can result in introduction of manufacturing operations of customized medical devices inside the hospitals. To this end, an innovative business model is required to facilitate and support such a shift by focusing on both product and service perspectives and hence taking into account an integrated product-service system approach. This paper aims at introducing a PSS-oriented business model to support customized production by hospitals. Moreover, a qualitative analysis of pros and cons of each business model configuration is presented in the paper. Eventually, considering each configuration along with its benefits and challenges, the hospital selects the most proper business model base on its strategy and long-term oriented objectives.
Metals represent about the 60-70% of vehicles weight. At the End of Life, after the disassembly of dangerous and some re-usable and recyclable parts, metals are scrapped and melted, with significant ...energy consumption. Innovative cold-reforming and joining technologies, coupled with systems to retrieve material information, can allow a second life before melting through remanufacturing. This would open the way to new circular business models in automotive providing added-value to customers as well as new market opportunities for OEMs. This paper investigates the potential of these approaches, as the results of the European H2020 “CarE-Service” project.
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