Towards circular economy in production planning: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract

In the actual era of the international trade, global warming and depletion of Earth's natural resources, the willingness to generate sustainable and competitive benefits determines us to stop thinking linearly (produce, consume and dispose) and to shift towards a circular approach by closing material loops. The latter falls within the concept of circular economy that, in turn, derives from reverse logistics. This paper proposes a comprehensive state-of-the-art review around the topic of circular economy and reverse logistics with a particular emphasis on mid-term production planning under discrete time settings. The broad spectrum of reviewed publications is categorized and discussed with respect to the main recovery operations, namely: (i) disassembly for recycling, (ii) from product to raw material recycling, and (iii) by-products and co-production. For each of the aforementioned recovery options, this paper elucidates the related definitions, reviews the mathematical formulations jointly with a structured overview of the solution methods, and discusses their industrial implications. Given the legislative pressure to mitigate environmental impacts caused by production processes, a special attention is paid to the greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption. A cross-cutting analysis of the reviewed literature brought forward a number of research gaps and revealed multiple research opportunities to support the development of the circular economy. The key findings show an ever growing interest in making sustainable the traditional linear industrial processes within a circular economy context.

Evaluation of the Implementation of the Circular Economy in Eu Countries in the Context of Sustainable Development

“…Given this, many scientists, as Sylkin et al (2019), Kryshtanovych et al (2020), Odrekhivckyy et al 2019, Kirchherr et al (2017), Giurco et al (2014), Graedel and Allenby (1995), George et al (2015), Di Maio and Rem (2015), Smol et al (2017), Stahel (2016), Suzanne et al (2020), Winning et al (2017), Bocken et al (2017), Bocke et al 2017, Bucknall (2020), Commoner (1971) began to research this topic in the context of the features of implementation and determination of the basic mechanisms of this type of economy.…”

“…Modeling and application of individual models of circular economy was investigated by Cramer (2020) and Suzanne et al (2020). Our research is focused more on the evaluation itself, which becomes a kind of prerequisite for further modeling.…”

Managing costs of an industrial enterprise when using secondary resources

“…In [8], attention is paid to medium-term production planning in conditions of discrete time. The authors point out that it is advisable to move from a linear to a circular (waste-free) economy paying attention to the processing of raw materials, emission utilization, energy consumption, and obtaining of by-products.…”

“…These studies established the relevance of the use of waste and emissions as secondary material and fuel-energy resources. The authors of [8,9] propose by-products that arise as a result of the utilization of production waste to third-party plants (circular economy) which are parts of the industrial symbiosis. However, it is proposed in [10] to use most of the waste in its own production as a secondary resource.…”

“…calculate gross income, costs and profit from formula (8). By changing components of the vector y, the established steps can be used to assess the impact of changes in the production plan on the financial results of the plant activities.…”