Product design for circularity and new circular business models. 

Supply chain Digital Product Passport adoption for product and material traceability. 

• Biotechnology and electrochemical advances for enhanced waste treatment and resource recovery. 
• AI-based waste separation and classification.

• Address the environmental footprint in Manufacturing topics : encompass and monitor the ecological footprint beyond CO2. In particular include life cycle assessement (methods and tools)
• Address in an integrated way the technologies and the implementation of circular schemes for the upcycling of waste and by products (including logitics and economics) 
• Help manufacturing adapt to Supplier Relationship M input variability through tools like machine learning 
• Solve problems in supply chains regarding the organizational aspects of production through industrial applications of AI

• Data and AI, to provide decision support tools for the design and management of circular industrial systems that meet the right needs
• Creation and implementation of advanced and automated disassembly and remanufacturing processes, encompassing the physical retrieval of products, dismantling, segregation, and categorization

• Apply circularity to aerospace sector. 
• Implement circularity in the batteries domain focusing on second life and recycling. 
• Identify large-scale applications for recycled composites, particularly in non-structural or secondary components. 
• Spinning of recycled carbon fiber. 
• Digitalize information on recycled composites. 
• Anticipate the introduction of new regulations for recycled composites. 
• Education by identify the needs of current industrial applications. 

Support circularity along value chains (up to recycling)

1. Decarbonization (circular economy, quality inspection for zero defect manufacturing, saves resources)
2. Status assessment of products in order to estimate their 2nd usage

Local Energy Communities as a solution for decarbonisation of manufacturing SME’s (non energy extensive industry)

AI, Big Data, federated data infrastructure , OT security 

Manufacturing Data Spaces

Anticipate ambitious (and harmonised) legal requirements and associated standards.  

Support for compliance is required: Compliance is becoming a challenge!  We are currently confronted with a wealth of very detailed legislative proposals from the EU Commission: EcodesignRegulation, Battery Regulation, Packaging Regulation, End-of-Life Vehicles Regulation, Right-to-Repair Directive, Critical Raw Materials Act. In addition, there are sustainability reporting obligations for circular economy activities in the CSRD and the taxonomy. There are also requirements for sustainability communication in the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive and the Green Claims Directive. There are also national legislative initiatives in the EU member states.

• Ecodesign for Sustainable products Regulations(ESPR)
• Deployment of circular Economy principles (9Rs). Increase recyclability, reparability, remanufacturing, …
• More circular and digital supply chain and manufacturing processes. Sharing information for the implementation of the digital product passport
• Simulationand AI models for circular design and manufacturing processes
• New business models, such as industrial symbiosis
• Skilled workforce
• Standards

High granularity and dynamic tracking of resource flows (high quality datasets)

• Confluence of simulation and AI models for circular production
• Design and manufacturing ‘service-oriented products’
• Adaptive manufacturing under ‘high variabilities’

• Development and deployment of innovative and automated de- and re-manufacturing operations, including the physical collection of products, disassembly, separation and sorting
• Digital passport to assure high quality, traceability and compliance with quality standards

• Highly productive recycling processes
• Minimize the use of materials along the manufacturing process chains

Today:

• Data integration: manufacturers face difficulties in integrating disparate data sources across product lifecycle due to their variable reliability, quality, frequency, and providing technologies.   Exploitation of simulated data
• Cost: the high initial investment required for simulation and data infrastructure
• Expertise: there is a lack of specialized skills in moving from data to knowledge, on sustainable manufacturing, especially for SMEs.

Near future:

• Regulatory pressure: stricter environmental regulations will necessitate more transparent circularity practices, including visibility on feeding data, shared calculation algorithms, univocal reference to applicable standards.
• Market demand: growing consumer awareness and demand for sustainable/circular products will pressure companies to innovate continuously and communicate the achieved goals.
• Technological evolution: which are the roles Artificial Intelligence, emerging sustainable technologies and materials may play in sustainable transition?

To prioritise:

• Mainstreaming sustainability: moving from expert LCA consultants to non-expert decision makers, interested in minimizing the impact of their  design or production choices without deep diving into the subject.
• Comprehensiveness, in terms of: Breadth of functionalities, Point of view, Regulation
• From assessing to acting: Advisory. Effective assessment is only originating questions. Answers are often hard to identify, so effective comparison, simulation, advisory functionalities are essential to the scope. 

• Critical Raw Materials, plastics, bio-based, technical ceramics and especially composites 
• substitute hazardous substances and focus on critical/strategic resources risk mitigation

Circularity is a property of a system, rather than the property of an individual product or service transitioning to a CE.  Therefore requires product, business model and ecosystem innovation.

Intelligent and autonomous handling, robotics,disassembly and logistic technologies

Circular, digitized and connected manufacturing ecosystems.

Be a key sector for UNBLOCKING more circularity of materials (now below 15% overall in Europe) 

Address in higher pace Circular Business Models (more effective industrial symbiosis, disassembly, quality and durability for increased servitization and product life extension through reuse, recycle and recover)

Accelerate Energy & Material Transitions (Efficiency and Renewable Energy; Bio-Based Systems)

De-manufacturing, recycling technologies and multiple dimensions for life-cycle analysis approaches integrated into Digital Twins

Accelerate Energy & Material Transitions (Efficiency and Renewable Energy; Bio-Based Systems)

Continue the efforts for Manufacturing as a Service (MaaS)

Continue the efforts for Zero-Defect-Manufacturing

• High standards for quality control, defects inspection, material classification
• Predictive Maintenance
• Automation control
• Sensors

Facilitate automation for SMEs

See specific slides and pointer to recording of challenges-roadmap presentation

• Integration of information flows throughout the product lifecycle improve knowledge for re-development & re-design of products that can be returned for further re-use which will better enable circularity,
• Develop methods and strategies for efficient reuse, refurbishment or remanufacturing instead of recycling, especially for products with short life time (also due to technology advancement)

• Holistic, integrated view on product development and circular supply chain
• The issues of circular adoption issues stem from lack of effort coordination.
• Integration of information flows throughout the product lifecycle improve knowledge for re-development & re-design of products that can be returned for further re-use which will better enable circularity,
• Develop methods and strategies for efficient reuse, refurbishment or remanufacturing instead of recycling, especially for products with short life time (also due to technology advancement)
• Develop national & international levels of resource sharing (e.g. symbiosis)

New Target Systems:  Focus on value retention and enhancement: Measure profitability by including ecological sustainability and human-related factors.

Ecosystem Driven Value Creation: Ecosystems and multidimensional business models are the key to transform our industry. Circular value systems are too complex for single companies, especially SME.

Integrated Circular Systems: Implement data-based value creation systems, IT designs for circularity, utilize advanced analytics and AI to support sustainable circularity.

Sector-Wide Change: Achieve change through large-scale use cases supported by entire sectors (e.g. mobility). 

Industry Standards and Work Force Transformation: Establish standards for construction methods, upgrade key components, and develop AI-supported models for employee skill transformation

Industry Standards and Work Force Transformation for circularity: Establish standards for construction methods, upgrade key components, and develop AI-supported models for employee skill transformation

• Efficient, flexible & adaptative manufacturing systems
• Smart manufacturing: interoperability and integration
• Integration of AI tools

Development of highly digital and circular supply chains

QE/QA/QM & ZDM in product-centric, hyper-customized manufacturing (I5.0)

• To reduce environmental pressure according to the directives, Europe must develop a new way of evaluating and quantifying the impacts, especially of emerging technologies
• The patents represent an industrial vision of technological forecasting and innovation to be monitored and considered during eco-design
• Developing new tools based on artificial intelligence can speed up patent analysis, considering many more documents to improve the significance of the results

The patents represent an industrial vision of technological forecasting and innovation to be monitored and considered during eco-design

• Enhance decision making process at supply chain level thanks to collaborative technologies to engage the full ecosystem
• New cross-sectoral supply chain models
• Resilience of workers vs resilience of company vs resilience of society
• The interlink between sustainability and Resilience

Towards more efficient and endogenous factories and machine elements,

How will the transition towards a post petrochemical raw materials and energy system be potentiated in the factories of the future (for instance: the role and impact of hydrogen?)

Circularity, raw materials and critical dependence.

Local Enegy Communities (LEC)

Target: green ecosystems “all over”, not only production factories

Integration: Integrated green ecosystems in energy supply and usage

User: Company as a nested green ecosystem: 

Supplier: Optimized building blocks (H2, RES, CHP,… ) for emerging markets 

Active participation in green energy exchange to help maintain competitive position on the market: “we are all energy producers and traders”

Key Enabling Technology: automated trading of flexible energy

KET: energy storage technologies, H2 carrying the flag

KET: new business models

LEC market size: A very rough guestimate is that LECs will account for half of the total energy use in the distribution grids.

It is estimated that H2LECwill be on average at least 75% self-sufficient, i.e.75% of green energy will be produced and used locally. 

A huge opportunity and challenge for users and suppliers; and new actors

Increasing synergies among the whole manufacturing value chain towards circularity.

For example: industrial water symbiosis.

Including the machine and human labour integration + social dimension of manufacturing.

For example: Bio-based materials to replace plastics in agriculture production vehicles

For example: 

• Re-using aluminium processing waste for hydrogen production.
• Emision reduction in hard to abate industries
• Security sensors and smart lighting in buildings for impact reduction

Foster circularity by design approaches
Support more companies making their products and processes more circular

Disassembly/ Dismantling as the basis of successful remanufacturing/ refurbishing/ repair/ re…

Perspectives and mobility sector needs

Materials:

• Ultra Light weight (Magnesium alloys, AM high strength Aluminium alloys)
• Lattice structures and FGMs
• MMCs (Metal Matrix Composities)
• Recycled materials (FR-Thermoplastics from by products)
• Materials qualification

Electrical machines

• Development of Rare-Earth-Free Electrical Machine for increasing sustainability without compromising performance and reliability
  • Reduced dependence on foreign markets
  • Eliminate exploitation of poor countries’ miners
• High flux density and low core loss soft magnetic alloys
  • Improve efficiency through losses reduction
  • Achieve compact and light-weight design (high-power density)

Sensors/sensing devices

• Design and integration of wearable and wireless sensors for environmental and performance monitoring: Sensing network extension for enhanced data collection
• Design of nanoscale CMOS chips for analog and digital signal processing:  Promote and support sensing device miniaturization

Transportation economics and policies

• Development of a clear pathway toward decarbonization of the transport industry
  • Identification of critical technologies to develop
  • Evaluation of various technological opportunities, economic impacts on both users and companies

The health crisis has highlighted the weaknesses in our society, revealing the limitations of our production models and the capacity of both the country and businesses to respond systematically to unexpected situations. Production systems and supply chains need to become more resilient to handle:

• At “macro” level, the unpredictable and rapidly changing social, technological, economic, and environmental challenges. They must also be adaptable to shifting market demands.
• At “micro” level, the differences in quality and composition in raw materials, so that process parameters must be optimized for the different types of input to the manufacturing process

Design an open and inclusive productive system by promoting:

• collaborative and interconnected models,
• cross-disciplinary and open research infrastructures,
• access to new technologies towards a society 5.0,
• and the innovation of processes, products, and services, to support regional intelligence and human capital.

Manufacturing data spaces with standardized and open data formats