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This paper aims to examine the current status and trends in circular economy (CE) research. The state of CE research is assessed by critically examining the field by considering diverse dimensions.

The systematic literature review (SLR) of CE research articles is analyzed using the content analysis methodology. The articles are selected from the Scopus database containing the keyword “Circular economy” in its title, abstract and keywords. In total, 587 research articles published on CE in various reputed peer-reviewed journals over 15 years (2005–2020) are selected for review.

The research in the domain of CE is in the beginning phase. It has numerous quantitative modeling opportunities, value creation and propositions aspects and application in real-life case problems. One of the significant findings is that the CE research field is more inclined toward the implication of the empirical qualitative research. The identified research gaps and future opportunities could provide further direction to broaden CE research.

The review focuses on publications published in peer-reviewed journals in the English language only. It restricts the recognition of relevant articles published in conference proceedings and languages other than English.

This research study will provide a deeper understanding of CE research's existing status and highlights the research trends, gap and its applicability in real-life case problems and setting up future research directions in the CE field.

Reverse logistics has attracted many industries due to product recalls, enormous waste generation, competitive reasons, vast opportunity in the waste management market, and to get the maximum value out of waste recovery. Selection of the right implementation strategy is vital for reverse logistics to function efficiently. Therefore, this research aims to evaluate the criteria for selecting reverse logistics strategy and help to choose the preferred strategy for its implementation.

Three reverse logistics implementation strategies, namely, in-house, joint venture and outsourcing, are proposed. A novel hybrid fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (F-AHP) and fuzzy measurement of alternatives and ranking according to COmpromise Solution (F-MARCOS) based framework is developed to fulfil the research objective. A survey is performed on Indian manufacturing industry to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed framework.

The result shows that government policy and regulations, reverse logistics risks and reduced emission have prime importance for a manufacturing industry which needs to implement reverse logistics into its supply chain. Outsourcing is the preferred reverse logistics strategy followed by joint venture and in-house that a manufacturing firm in India can implement.

The research results are based on the responses of the survey received. This research considers various industry sectors to test the applicability of the framework. However, for actual implementation, this survey must first be limited to a particular industry as the results will apply to that industrial sector only.

This developed framework simplifies the procedure of selecting the strategy when the industry needs to implement reverse logistics. For industries working with a smaller set of criteria, this framework is a powerful and dynamic approach for reducing and choosing the most pertinent one that helps accomplish their objectives of reverse logistics implementation strategy selection.

Based on the literature and current applicability of reverse logistics, this research proposes three models to implement reverse logistics in Indian industries. A novel hybrid F-AHP and F-MARCOS based framework is developed to handle the selection of suitable reverse logistics strategy.

Outsourcing is a crucial tool for an organization to focus on its core business operations. The purpose of this study is to find critical success factors (CSFs) of outsourcing and to prioritize the performance outcomes of outsourcing because of the adoption of its CSFs.

This research proposes the hybrid framework of fuzzy Delphi, fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (F-AHP) and fuzzy additive ratio assessment (F-ARAS) to fulfill the research objectives. Fuzzy Delphi is used to finalize the CSFs of outsourcing and F-AHP provides the relative weights to it. F-ARAS is used to prioritize the outsourcing performance indicators with respect to CSFs. The empirical case investigation of three Indian large-scale public sector process industries is conducted to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed framework.

The result shows that increased dominance in core activity, ability to increase or decrease capacity, improved financial performance, optimized resource utilization and increased market share are the top five performance outcomes because of the adoption of outsourcing CSFs.

Factors such as cultural, political, environmental and size of the organization may have a significant implication on the research results.

This is a novel approach towards the prioritization of performance outcomes of outsourcing. Moreover, the present research is a helpful tool to manage outsourcing and choosing which performance outcome of outsourcing ought to be used to measure implementation. This will help to recognize potential opportunities and preparing strategic planning for both short-term and long-term goals.

The purpose of this paper is to study and analyze the effect of roughness and magnetic fluid lubricant on the performance of the squeeze film formed when the upper plate with a porous facing approaches an impermeable and flat lower plate by considering the rotation of the plates.

The roughness of the bearing surface is modeled by a stochastic random variable with non‐zero mean, variance and skewness. The associated Reynolds' equation is stochastically averaged with respect to the random roughness parameter. Results for bearing performance characteristics such as load‐carrying capacity and response time for various values of mean, standard deviation and measure of symmetry are numerically computed. The results are presented graphically as well as in tabular form.

It is observed that the bearing suffers owing to the transverse surface roughness. However, negatively skewed roughness may enhance the performance of the bearing system for suitable values of variance. It is also seen that rotation decreases the load‐carrying capacity but it has marginal influence in the presence of the magnetic fluid. Further, the performance of the bearing system registers a steady improvement with the increasing values of the magnetization parameter. In addition, the response time follows the trends of the load‐carrying capacity.

The originality of the paper lies in the fact that the roughness must be accounted for while designing the bearing system, even though a suitable rotation ratio parameter is chosen in the presence of a strong magnetic fluid. Of course, the best performance of the bearing system is registered in the case of negatively skewed roughness.