Proposal of a strategic model to unlock the circular potential in industrial practice

Remanufacturing of end-of-life products and parts is seen as a solution in the transition towards a circular economy. There are many proposed tools and methods to facilitate the application of this circular strategy, however, among them, there is a lack of support tools for practitioners that include multiple perspectives related to the value chain and circular economy. In fact, remanufacturing strategy, economic and environmental trade-offs, and circularity indicators are rarely integrated within one framework. In this paper, an approach is presented taking advantage of the state-of-the-art research on green profit model and circularity indicators; in other words, these tools are used together to unlock the circular potential in manufacturing practice. In this way, typical problems of production planning and control in remanufacturing processes are interconnected with the goals of sustainable development, also considering product design and end-of-life strategy choices. The presented framework represents a promising support to be used in industrial practice. A case study based on PV panel infrastructure allows a better comprehension of the research outputs and assesses the validity of the support provided by the framework in the deployment of circular economy strategies.