Action on circularity is not taken when information and evidence is not available across the life cycle chain. The CircThread project's main objective is to unlock access to data now in silo’s, and enhancing it as decision information for actors across and outside the extended product life cycle. To do this CircThread will deliver a Circular Digital Thread methodology, a framework for facilitating information flow exchanges across the extended life cycle chain of Products, Components, their Materials and Chemicals data, and related Circularity, Environmental, Social and Economic Information. The core is to create data linkages between product chain, value chain, asset chain and life cycle chains based on a Product information Catalogue, and enable information exchanges via data contracts governed by secure and reliable management standards. The project will implement the system in Cloud Platforms in 3 demonstration clusters in Italy, Slovenia and Spain rolled-out across the entire extended life cycle chain of home appliances (incl. washing machines and dish washers) and home energy systems (incl. boilers, solar-PV systems and batteries) to test 7 circularity use cases and associated business models. The expected impact for the work programme is to enable improved decision taking accelerating Circularity and Carbon emissions reductions including: i) Enhanced life extensions of products by better understanding of in use failures and maintenance needs, ii) improved understanding of the quality of end-of-life products for spare parts buy-backs to support right to repair, iii) improved assessment of circularity routes by waste management and recycling companies by delivering enhanced product composition data, iv) improved materials and chemicals tracing of products and components for safer products and identifying Critical Raw Materials cycles, v) Empowering decisions by citizens and citizen organisations by providing direct access to product performance information.

The aim of the current project is to bring about the development of the full demonstrator of DiCiM, a set of integrated digital solutions that makes use of Internet of Things (IoT), Machine Learning (ML) based Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, Image Processing and Augmented Reality (AR) to support different actors of the industrial value chain such as managers, engineers and operators in their decision making and to carry out value recovery activities for circular economy. The integrated digital solutions include an open access digital platform for lifecycle information management and support solutions for value recovery activities. DiCiM project revolves around the value use and value recovery phases of the Circular Value Model (CVM) with the specific data, technology and the management needed to support its implementation. In particular, it focuses on integrated digital solutions to enabling condition monitoring during the use phase, optimizing the reverse logistics, and achieving efficiency and responsiveness in the value recovery activities (i.e. collection, inspection, sorting, disassembly, testing and repairing/refurbishing/remanufacturing/recycling) to enable reuse of products, parts and materials. DiCiM project will demonstrate integrated digital solutions in four use cases in three industrial sectors that represent over two thirds of the European Economy. They include whitegoods (i.e. refrigerators, washing machines), electronics (i.e. printers) and automotive. With important gains such as increase in spare part recovery efficiency by 90% (which means 126 000 labour hours are saved for refrigerator demonstrator) and increase in spare part recovery rate by 20% (about 2920 tons net material saving for washing machines and 6000 tons for automotive). DiCiM digital solutions will boost new circular economy business models based on value recovery activities to sustain and encourage remanufacturing throughout Europe.

The overall goal of ReCiPSS is to explore success factors for circular manufacturing systems in two cases where OEMs have different levels control over their value chains: one case with full control, and one case with partial control. The project will achieve this goal through two industry-driven large-scale demonstrators of circular manufacturing systems in two key industries The white goods demonstrator relates to a tightly connected value chain and will demonstrate the successful implementation of circular manufacturing systems where the OEM (Gorenje) is in full control of the entire product throughout all stages (i.e. design, manufacturing, forward supply chain, customer use phase, reverse supply chain, recovery activities and re-distribution). The demonstrator will develop and implement a pay-per-wash offering for 300 washing machines, using co-creation methods. Each washing machine will be refurbished twice and serve over 3 life cycles of 5 years. The generalization of this new business model should lead to additional revenues of €150M per year. The automotive spare parts demonstrator relates to a more complex value chain where the OEM (Bosch) does not have full control of the product throughout all stages. In order to demonstrate how third-party automotive remanufacturers can be effectively integrated in circular supply chains while keeping their independence from the OEM, the demonstrator will streamline the reverse logistics flow for 80,000 cores, enabling aftermarket stakeholders to close the loop by using a single service provider for reverse logistics. Cores will be identified and evaluated only once and then directly shipped to the final destination (remanufacturer), allowing cost savings of €5 per core i.e. potential savings of €175M per year if generalized throughout the industry. Co-creation workshops with stakeholders will ensure that the way the used cores are identified and transported is optimally aligned with the needs of all parties involved.