Adaptive Life Cycle Costing (LCC) Modeling and Applying to Italy Ceramic Tile Manufacturing Sector: Its Implication of Open Innovation

Abstract

Converging business, sustainability, and technology is a challenge that manufacturing firms face to create value and be competitive. Energy- and raw material-intensive manufacturing industries are particularly aware of environmental issues and circular economy practices due to the large amounts of resources they use. However, manufacturing companies must also be mindful of economic sustainability in order to make their business profitable. For this, appropriate economic evaluation tools are needed, one of which is life cycle costing (LCC). LCC, when applied to the manufacturing context, is often considered as a simple extension of the life cycle assessment (LCA). This is the main limitation of LCC, as it only contributes to determining the economic value of environmental damage. This research aims to overcome this limitation, analyzing the Italian ceramic tile manufacturing sector as a case study in order to conceptually develop, through the abductive methodology, a calculation framework that extends the potential of LCC by including circularity parameters. Subsequently, the conceptual framework is empirically validated using sectoral industrial costs by configuring two scenarios (with and without circularity practices) and building a benchmark for individual firms in this industry. Finally, the research includes some considerations on the positive implications and potential of life cycle costing in an open innovation context.

Flexibility and Resilience in Corporate Decision Making: A New Sustainability-Based Risk Management System in Uncertain Times

“…The interviews were then checked and digitally transcribed for subsequent evaluation of the results (Medina-Salgado et al 2021 ). Table 3 also shows the framework for conducting the interviews and the questions asked of the sampled company executives in order to capture the different awarenesses on the topic of risk in its multidimensionality (technology, environment, economy and society).…”

Industry 4.0 and Smart Data as Enablers of the Circular Economy in Manufacturing: Product Re-Engineering with Circular Eco-Design

“…As a case study, a company was selected among the TOP 10 Italian producers of ceramics and among the TOP 5 for economic perfor-mance, which produces the tile type of porcelain stoneware [58]. The same company has already been successfully engaged as a case study in research in the field of sustainability management [46,59,60].…”

Reflective backward analysis to assess the operational performance and eco-efficiency of two industrial districts

“…The industry has been characterized by change over the past decade and has progressed toward sustainability and Industry 4.0 approaches (Garc ıa-Muiña et al, 2020). However, the increasing competition among manufacturing firms in global markets, made even more insidious by the socioeconomic crisis that occurred in the pandemic period (2020-21), is confronting these firms with the need to investigate what strategy to focus on for the future (Medina-Salgado et al, 2021). In addition, the literature places a great deal of emphasis on the comparison between Spain and Italy, as they are considered two reference manufacturing models for industrial ceramics (Dondi et al, 2021).…”

“…, 2020). However, the increasing competition among manufacturing firms in global markets, made even more insidious by the socio-economic crisis that occurred in the pandemic period (2020–21), is confronting these firms with the need to investigate what strategy to focus on for the future (Medina-Salgado et al. , 2021).…”