The constantly increasing demand of scarce resources and critical raw materials (CRMs), requires efficient usage of resources - reuse and recycling of materials- and responsible waste management and prevention. The circular economy’s model establishes a virtuous cycle where products and resources can be reused, repurposed and recycled to maximize productivity of resources, to reduce waste and by products that can become raw materials (RMs) entering in other industrial processes, thus reducing the depletion of natural resources and the overall environmental effects on climate change. Plooto aims to deliver a Circular and Resilient Information System (CRIS) to support manufacturers in their green, digital and circular transition. CRIS enables waste reduction and end-to-end traceability of Secondary Raw Materials (SRM) through interconnected digital services for real-time decision making, monitoring and certification of materials and products. Plooto delivers: a) a transformation framework based on traceability strategies for materials/products per business case, with reference processes for SRM use from waste deposit to new products, and governance models for circular value chains; b) ICT tools for modelling product, production processes and supply chains, as an aggregation of individual component Digital Twins with cognition capabilities (cognitive Digital Twins – CDTs); c) Data will feed RM-recovery and waste dataspaces allowing the provision of material certification and product passport; and d) A circular sustainability balanced scorecard (framework+toolkit) to assess impact of decision-making at CDT level based on various KPIs. The solution will be piloted in three different circular supply chains demonstrating waste reduction, reusability of scrap and production by-products, operational improvement.

European materials industry is considered a key enabler for industrial development and the EU has a historically strategic position in this sector. However, there is a low uptake in European materials industry for digital technologies. Hereby, it is crucial to provide all stakeholders of the EU with advanced digital technologies to evolve towards an agile European materials industry with intelligent enterprises that maximise and integrate the utility of digital materials sciences knowledge. DiMAT will develop Open Digital Tools with a set of advanced technologies for offering European SMEs and Mid-Caps an affordable (in terms of cost, implementation and usability) full modelling, simulation and optimisation system in each stage of the material value chain (design, processing and manufacturing) for improving quality, sustainability, effectiveness, and competitiveness of materials. DiMAT will deploy 3 integrated Suites: 1) DiMAT Data and Assessment Suite: digital technologies for storing, sharing, representing and assessing materials data; 2) DiMAT DiMAT Modelling and Design Suite: digital technologies for material design, in terms of their internal structure, properties and performance, in order to predict the material behaviour before manufacturing; 3) DiMAT Simulation and Optimisation Suite: digital technologies for creating efficient materials manufacturing simulation processes and determining the behaviour of the material mechanical characterization models to be used in the AI training and prediction. The DiMAT Suites will be demonstrated in 4 Pilots of European designers and producers of different materials: textile, composite, glass and graphite.