CIRCULOOS in a nutshell
CIRCULOOS offers a transformative opportunity towards circular economy for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) where cutting-edge tools leverage the power of trusted data to build an ecosystem of collaborators where supply chains are dynamic, and optimal in terms of their impact on the environment and orchestrated end-to-end.
Blockchain, DataSpaces for the Industry 4.0, Process Automation, AI-based LCA, Machine Vision and Robotics are fused together to form the machinery for this transformation.
CIRCULOOS aims to deliver the tools to enable MSMEs become full members of the Circular Manufacturing value chain. These tools orchestrate and continuously optimise the supply-chain end-to-end and integrate planning and execution monitoring to enable transparent and on-time communication. Combining these with direct calculation of the product sustainability and circularity profile, for both internal and external partners, this environment will enable them to configure and execute disruptive circular manufacturing processes for sustainable production that covers the entire life cycle of products; either by recovering the value of product that ended-up as waste or from recycled and remanufactured products.
1.
To create an Agile Circular Manufacturing Supply Chains Architecture and platform: A digital platform with an open ICT architecture is a prerequisite for the formation of Agile Circular Supply Chains, given the need for efficient data sharing practices (see challenge above). The project will build on the existing RAMP IOT and marketplace platform for Manufacturing SMEs, to offer the orchestration of production processes and process execution across the supply chain, in a collaborative fashion, leveraging modules for intelligent production, sustainability assessment and trustworthy data sharing. The core building blocks and software components of RAMP for data management are the well-known elements of the FIWARE Reference Architecture for Digital Twins.
2.
To Assess the Circular and Environmental performances of Supply Chain scenarios Decision making among several alternative scenarios requires quality end-to-end data, comparable results, and rapid response. To these aims, CIRCULOOS needs a standardised data model. Moreover, less-confident data need identification and compensation to increase description robustness, most likely drawing on historical data identified by similarity.
To feed sustainability-based decision making, these standardised descriptions must be translated into Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) data by a Supply Chain sustainability pondering engine that must comply with standards in force (e.g., ISO 14040/14044 and PEF framework of European Commission, the Material Circularity Index -MCI, the Circular Footprint Formula) in order to assure beyond-project comparability and profile sharing. Sustainability and circularity impacts calculation must be real-time and semi-automatic, to face the challenge of temporal validity of the collected data.
3.
Cybersecure and trustworthy data sharing across the supply chain:
CIRCULOOS will implement its own trust framework to achieve further flexibility and agility of supply chains, in alignment and interoperability with the trust framework that is being implemented in European Blockchain Service Infrastructure (EBSI). At the core of the trust framework there is a set of registries that will be implemented based on one or more blockchain networks, to ensure decentralisation, transparency, and robustness. The blockchain network will be built upon the federation of several national blockchains compatible with the EBSI. For transparency and trust between European manufacturing SMEs, all transactions will be stored/logged in the blockchain, allowing data providers to audit when and by whom their data has been consumed. An integrated, holistic novel risk management process incorporates both Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIA) and well-established IT Risk Management Frameworks and Methodologies (such as ISO/IEC 27005:2018, NIST SP 800 – 37, NIST SP 800 – 30, NIST SP 800 – 39, CRAMM, eBIOS, BSI Standard 200-3, ITSRM) to manage the manufacturing sector supply chain risk landscape.
4.
At least 19 Experiments for demonstration and validation (EXDs)
Demonstration and validation experiments will provide requirements and drive the architecture and platform creation early in the project, while validating and extending it later on. During open call procedures, manufacturing and innovation SMEs will collaboratively design and propose disruptive recycling, remanufacturing, and/ or refurbishment cases by valorising the CIRCULOOS platform, data sharing, and the offered and new tools, to demonstrate sustainability improvements and new, innovative circular business models. 3,6 M will be allocated to open calls. EXDs will demonstrate agility and sustainability across the supply chains (which require at least 3 steps of chain through innovative SMEs and start-ups (minimum 3 separate entities).
5.
CIRCULOOS sustainability and impact:
To deploy the resulting services and platform on RAMP marketplace, and complement it with additional services, fostering collaboration and partner search, training on circular manufacturing concepts and the CIRCULOOS architecture, platform and services, business modelling and exploitation planning for the experiments. The extended RAMP cyber secure IOT platform, and services, will be at the core of the extended ecosystem of DIHs that is maintained around RAMP in DIHs and other projects, to ensure its sustainability.
The core-value of the R-strategies
CIRCULOOS advocates Circular Economy through R-strategies: Repair, Reuse, Recycle, Refurbish, Remanufacture, and Repurpose. These strategies extend product lifespans and minimize waste, but they often require complex re-engineering, especially for SMEs.
CIRCULOOS focuses on these challenging R-strategies, fostering real-time collaboration among SMEs. Our AI-driven RAMP platform facilitates data sharing and new agreements, unlocking the circular value of inter-organisational cooperation.
The project aims to deploy
Circular end-to-end supply chain orchestration for collaborative workflows which incorporates planning and execution metrics and integrates advanced and multimodal visualisation and analytics. The visualisation is delivered by comprehensive Digital Twins of the supply chains formulated, the factory processes and product design phases.
Supply Chain Optimisation that monitors the global (across the supply chain) and local (within the factory) processes and execution, inputs and outputs and configuration parameters, to enable data-driven AI decision making, this way supporting continuous optimisation of targeted and measured performance and sustainability parameters.
Dynamic Sustainability Assessment functionalities that investigate alternative supply-chain scenarios (varying in terms of materials used, processing technologies, suppliers involved and/or activated circular economy practices) in place of the existing schemes, quickly measuring their performance in terms of environmental sustainability and circular economy profile.
Supply Chain Data Spaces for seamless, multi-level data flow across the supply chain partners, supporting the reuse of materials in novel products, the extension of the life-cycle of finished products (remanufacturing), and data-driven decisions for collaboration of parties offering matching services in the most dynamic and efficient way.
Cybersecure and trustworthy data sharing across the supply chain by employing a distributed, trusted and efficient Identity and Access management system, that together with the associated trust framework will coordinate the identities of all IoT objects and ensure trustworthy.
CM specific tools for the automatic recognition of recyclable parts by modern Machine Vision tools and Advanced Robotics, to enable optimised flows in the selection process.
Novel circular business processes will be demonstrated supporting reusing, reducing, and recycling material in production and consumption systems. The new collaborative production models will provide quantifiable results on the sustainability increase across the supply chain, in terms of efficient use of raw materials, of by-products, of waste and energy and of emissions reduction.
CIRCULOOS leverages the above with the RAMP integrated innovation IOT platform and the European network around it to deliver a CM ecosystem and platform for Manufacturing SMEs.
Skills upskilling and reskilling will be provided in RAMP and through online courses, webinars, and best practice guides and success stories based on the pilots and Experiments for Demonstration (EXDs).
CIRCULOOS understands that quality and trusted data is key to choosing alternative production scenarios:
Which sources do I use for my production?
Does my process need to change to comply with new sources?
How do I find the trade-off between cost, production delays and making greener products?
CIRCULOOS tries to answer this type of question from a data-driven viewpoint and picks project pilots with leather products, plastic accessories and wood-based manufacturing as their starting points.
Partners
Boosting innovation and entrepreneurship in a newborn community requires a strong, innovative, and experimented ecosystem. The CIRCULOOS consortium coordinated by EUROPEAN DYNAMICS is composed of RTOs, Digital Innovation Hubs (SuPSI, CUT, INN), industrial suppliers (EDGR, ALA, FIW, INCL), manufacturing SMEs (Fiction Factory, Contenedores LOLO, KHO, B&A, THER, CAN), industrial clusters (Innomine, Alastria), open call managers (F6S), and dissemination and communication managers (MWCB), leveraging the existing networks and communities of these partners.
