Product Life Cycle Planning for Sustainable Manufacturing: Translating Theory into Business Opportunities

Implementing sustainability principles of the circular economy and associated transitions tend to transcend the boundaries of individual businesses. This calls for a shift in traditional sustainability thinking by transitioning from business-oriented sub-optimisation to collaborative value chain optimisation. This paper proposes a framework to support companies in this transition by visualising the different relations in a morphological matrix to encourage the selection of the most appropriate principles for the specific industry context. The framework is evaluated in an industrial case with multiple stakeholders resulting in a feasible closed material loop.