Information process-system modelling for Circular Economy of manufacturing systems

Recent push towards sustainable development have lead machine tool builders to begin adopting novel business models which are usually peculiar in product-service-systems. In particular, business models as ‘pay-per-use’ introduced the issue of rental of production capacity integrated with the management of the life cycle of assets in a Circular Economy perspective. However, when it comes to machine tool builders, the high degree of customization of capital goods and in particular of multi-stage automated assembly systems that are strongly linked to the characteristics of the final product make this solution more difficult. Hence, the implementation of such business models represents a clear challenge for machine tool builders and manufacturing system suppliers from technological perspective. This work discusses preliminary results in the technological implications of such strategy. A real industrial case related to cross-sector multi-stage automated assembly systems is presented to highlight the technological challenges and potential research directions.