Assessing relations between Circular Economy and Industry 4.0: a systematic literature review

TLDR

Industry 4.0 and Circular Economy are among the most debated topics of recent decades, attracting global interest from policymakers, practitioners, and scholars, and overlapping in hybrid categories such as Circular I4.0 and Digital CE. The study develops an innovative framework to highlight the links between Industry 4.0 and Circular Economy and to identify future research fields. This framework is constructed from two perspectives, integrating concepts from both fields to map their interrelations. The framework shows that Industry 4.0 technologies consistently influence Circular Economy, with varying prevalence across different areas, and can enhance multiple types of relations.

Abstract

Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and Circular Economy (CE) are undoubtedly two of the most debated topics of the last decades. Progressively, they gained the interest of policymakers, practitioners and scholars all over the world. Even if they have been usually described as two independent research fields, there are some examples presenting overlaps between these topics, represented by hybrid categories like Circular I4.0 and Digital CE. Starting from these two perspectives, an innovative framework both highlighting the links between I4.0 and CE and unveiling future research fields has been developed. Basing on one of the two perspectives, results show as it is possible to enhance a set of different relations. Depending on a dedicated area of either CE or I4.0 it is possible to see the prevalence of some I4.0 technology than others. However, the influence of I4.0 technologies on CE is always verified.