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There is now much emphasis in both research and practice on the principles of circular economies. In this paper remanufacturing is examined as a key enabler of circular practices, and the concept of “Product-Agnostic Manufacturing” (PAR) is proposed. This work differentiates PAR from many traditional approaches to remanufacturing by virtue of PAR's treatment of product variety. Most existing approaches to remanufacturing feature low variety and standardisation; this study instead suggests that the exploitation of flexibilities in both operations and supply chains leads to new competitive strategies for firms to exploit.

This is a conceptual study that builds on a thorough exploration of contemporary remanufacturing literature in the development of the new PAR concept.

Through a detailed literature review it is shown that there are a range of benefits, challenges, and critical success factors that underpin the remanufacturing concept. Building on this understanding and bridging literature in operations flexibility and supply chain design, a detailed discussion on the nature of PAR is provided, and an agenda for future research developed.

Whilst there has been much literature on remanufacturing, there is a general tendency to treat supply chain and remanufacturing operations quite distinctly in individual articles. Additionally, there has been little consideration of multi-product remanufacturing, and for the limited studies where this is done, the emphasis is typically on problem avoidance. This study aims to provide a detailed insight into the developed PAR concept, showing how the remanufacture of a wide range of product varieties may be achieved through flexible operations and supply chain design.

This paper aims to propose a stepwise method to improve the sustainability of manufacturing processes.

The proposed approach is based on an extensive literature review and research around the environmental, economic and social pillars of sustainability in manufacturing firms. Considering the lean approach, the manufacturing processes are mapped in a value stream and analyzed through the extensive identified sustainability criteria.

The findings reveal the consumption and waste of natural and nonrenewable resources, through going beyond the existing boundaries and focusing on relevant derived production pieces and tracing to their origins. The findings also present the effect of the time value of money on sustainability by using the cost–time profile as a sustainability criterion. This research finds out the employees’ impacts on sustainability improvement through an effective focus on technical, cultural and personal aspects.

The research outcomes provide operations managers and decision-makers in the field of sustainability with a practical platform to comprehend and assess the factors contributing to the manufacturing process sustainability and to plan relevant corrective actions accordingly.

The extended view of sustainability criteria in this research as well as its visual-analytical approach will help practitioners to assess and improve sustainability in their operations in a more holistic way.

This study reviews scholarly work in sustainable green logistics and remanufacturing (SGLR) and their subdisciplines, in combination with bibliometric, thematic and content analyses that provide a viewpoint on categorization and a future research agenda. This paper provides insight into current research trends in the subjects of interest by examining the most essential and most referenced articles promoting sustainability and climate-neutral logistics.

For the literature review, the authors extracted and sifted 2180 research and review papers for the period 2008–2023 from the Scopus database. The authors performed bibliometric and content analyses using multiple software programs such as Gephi, VOSviewer and R programming.

The SGLR papers can be grouped into seven clusters: (1) The circular economy facets; (2) Decarbonization of operations to nurture a climate-neutral business; (3) Green sustainable supply chain management; (4) Drivers and barriers of reverse logistics and the circular economy; (5) Business models for sustainable logistics and the circular economy; (6) Transportation problems in sustainable green logistics and (7) Digitalization of logistics and supply chain management.

In this review, fundamental ideas are established, research gaps are identified and multiple future research subjects are proposed. These propositions are categorized into three main research streams, i.e. (1) Digitalization of SGLR, (2) Enhancing scopes, sectors and industries in the context of SGLR and (3) Developing more efficient and effective climate-neutral and climate change-related solutions and promoting more environmental-related and sustainability research concerning SGLR. In addition, two conceptual models concerning SGLR and climate-neutral strategies are developed and presented for managers and practitioners to consider when adopting green and sustainability principles in supply chains. This review also highlights the need for academics to go beyond frameworks and build new techniques and instruments for monitoring SGLR performance in the real world.

This study provides an overview of the evolution of SGLR; it also clarifies concepts, environmental concerns and climate change practices, particularly those directed to supply chain management.

In recent times, reverse logistics (RL) is gaining significant traction in various automobile industries to recapture returned vehicles’ value. A good RL program can lower manufacturing costs, establish a green supply chain, enhance customer satisfaction and provide a competitive advantage. However, reducing disruptions and increasing operational efficiency in the automobile RL requires implementing innovative technology to improve information flow and security. Thus, this manuscript aims to examine the hurdles in automobile RL activities and how they can be effectively tackled by blockchain technology (BCT). Merging BCT and RL provides the entire automobile industry a chance to generate value for its consumers through effective vehicle return policies, manufacturing cost reduction, maintenance records tracking, administration of vehicle information and a clear payment record of insurance contracts.

This research is presented in three stages to accomplish the task. First, previous literature and experts' opinions are examined to highlight certain factors that are an aggravation to BCT implementation. Next, this study proposed an interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy set (IVIFS) – decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) with Choquet integral framework for computing and analyzing the comparative results of factor interrelationships. Finally, the causal outline diagrams are plotted to determine the influence of factors on one another for BCT implementation in automobile RL.

This study has categorized the barriers to BCT implementation into five major factors – operational and strategical, technical, knowledge and behavioral, financial and infrastructural, and government rules and regulations. The results revealed that disreputable technology, low-bearing capacity of IT systems and operational inefficiency are the most significant factors to be dealt with by automobile industry professionals for finer and enhanced RL processes utilizing BCT. The most noticeable advantage of BCT is its enormous amount of data, permitting automobile RL to develop client experience through real-time data insights.

This study reveals several factors that are hindering the implementation of BCT in RL activities of the automobile industry. The results can assist experts and policymakers improve their existing decision-making systems while making an effort to implement BCT into the automobile industry's RL activities.

Although there are several studies on the benefits of BCT in RL and the adoption of BCT in the automobile industry, individually, none have explicated the use of BCT in automobile RL. This is also the first kind of study that has used IVIFS-DEMATEL with the Choquet integral framework for computing and analyzing the comparative results of factor interrelationships hindering BCT implementation in automobile RL activities.

Scarcity of resources, ecological imbalance, global warming, rising energy prices and the ever-changing need for variety have attracted the government and manufacturers for sustainable development of the industries. The integrated sustainable-green-lean-six sigma-agile manufacturing system (ISGLSAMS) provides a solid platform for meeting both the customers’ variety needs and business sustainability requirements. Many organizations opted for ISGLSAMS, but still due to various barriers organizations are not able to fully implement ISGLSAMS. The purpose of this paper is to identify the barriers to the ISGLSAMS, so that a more sustainable industrial manufacturing system and industrial symbiosis can be developed.

A literature review, from the Web of Science and Google Scholar database, has been carried out to identify the various barriers to the implementation of ISGLSAMS in the entire value chain. A total of 168 research papers have been reviewed for identifying the ISGLSAMS barriers.

This paper elaborates the concept of the ISGLSAMS, its attributes and various barriers and contributes to a better understanding and successful implementation of ISGLSAMS to meet business’ sustainability and market performance goals in the entire value chain. The paper also projects the future research framework and directions for the ISGLSAMS, integrated sustainable-green-lean-six sigma-agile (ISGLSA) product and ISGLSA supply and value chain.

The study contributes to a better understanding of ISGLSAMS’ barriers. The government, stakeholders and policymakers may plan the policy, road map and strategies to overcome the ISGLSAMS’ barriers. In-depth knowledge of subclauses of ISGLSAMS’ barriers will help the practitioners to overcome the ISGLSAMS’ barriers strategically. By overcoming the ISGLSAMS barriers, a more sustainable 7 Rs based market focused manufacturing system can be designed. This will also increase the opportunities to enhance the industrial ecology, industrial symbiosis and better recovery of the product, process and supply chain residual value. This will reduce the waste to the ecosystem.

This work has been carried out in search of a more sustainable manufacturing system, i.e. ISGLSAMS (which is 7 Rs based, i.e. 6 Rs of sustainability with 7th R, reconfiguration) to meet the customer variety needs along with sustainability in the ever-changing customer market. This study adds value to the practitioners to identify and prioritize the ISGLSAMS’ industry-specific barriers and design the solution for the more sustainable development of (1) industries, (2) the industrial symbiosis system and (3) the ISGLSA product, process, system and supply value chain with minimum resource consumption and environmental impact. The research also contributes to the (a) ISGLSAMS (b) ISGLSA supply chain (c) reconfigurable, sustainable and modular products and (d) redesign, recovery and refurbishing of the product to increase the product life cycle.

This study advocates the importance of taking an evolutionary perspective in the strategic configuration of closed-loop supply chains (CLSC) in the transition to a circular economy. Building on the supply chain management and industrial dynamics research domains, an evolutionary analytical framework was developed and applied in the empirical context of the ongoing industrial transition to e-mobility.

This study is designed as an in-depth exploratory case study to capture the multi-layer dynamic complexities and their interplay in CSLC development. The empirical investigation was based on two-year interactions between the authors and various departments in a leading European heavy vehicle manufacturer. The proposed evolutionary analytical framework was used for investigating the dynamics of four CLSC configurations through ten possible trajectories.

The findings demonstrate that the evolution of each CLSC configuration comes with multiple challenges and requirements and point out the necessity for the co-development of technologies, product design and production, and infrastructure through long-term relationships among key supply chain actors. However, this evolutionary journey is associated with multiple dilemmas caused by uncertainties in the market and technology developments. All these factors were properly captured and critically analyzed, along with their interactions, thanks to the constructs included in the proposed evolutionary analytical framework.

The proposed evolutionary framework is applicable for examination of SC transformation in the context of market and technology development, and is particularly relevant for transitioning from linear SC to CLSC. The framework offers a single actor perspective, as it does not directly tackle dynamics and effects of actions taken by SC actors.

The developed framework can support SC managers in identifying, framing, and comparing alternative strategies for CLSC configuration in the transition process.

This study proposes the framework for understanding and guiding the evolutionary process of CLSC development. Its uniqueness lies in the integration of concepts from innovation and evolutionary theories coming from industrial dynamics and SCM literature streams.

This paper aims to examine the optimal sourcing strategies and pricing decisions of competing toy manufacturers and to discuss how manufacturers’ decisions are impacted by competition.

The authors consider a single-period model to characterise the competition between two competing toy manufacturers. Both of them are free to choose between virgin material and recycled material. The authors consider two types of consumers: sensitive consumers who are concerned about product safety and prefer the toy made of virgin material and insensitive consumers who do not care what material is used in the toy. The competing manufacturers play a Cournot competition.

The results reveal a special case of a win-win situation for both the manufacturer and the consumer. In addition, an increasing number of sensitive consumers does not always raise the price of virgin-material toys.

The authors derive the manufacturer’s equilibrium sourcing strategies, corresponding market-clearing prices and profits obtained.

The paper investigates how toy manufacturers’ optimal sourcing strategies are impacted by competition, considering market segments.

Waste generated from electrical and electronic equipment, collectively known as E-waste, remains a persistent environmental, economic and social problem. Sustainable E-waste management (EWM) has numerous benefits, such as preventing electronic waste from entering landfills, reducing the need for virgin materials by recovering valuable materials from recycling and lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Circular economy (CE) practices are considered the initial steps toward sustainable EWM, but some hurdles have been reported in the adoption of these practices. Therefore, the current study aims to identify the common CE practices, sustainability of the EWM process and the challenges in EWM, and to develop a conceptual framework for effective EWM.

Very few studies have proposed frameworks that acknowledge the challenges and CE practices of EWM. To fill this gap, a systematic literature review (SLR) was performed, and 169 research articles were explored.

A total of seven challenges in the adoption of effective EWM were identified: rules and policy, infrastructure, consumer behaviour, informal sectors, community culture, technology and economy. Eight common CE practices were also found for effective EWM: reuse, recycle, remanufacturing, refurbishment, repair, reduce, recover and repurpose.

A conceptual framework guiding sustainable EWM was proposed, which includes solutions for the identified challenges, and CE practices with sustainable benefits.

To overcome the various pressures related to the environmental damage raised by production processes, enhancing sustainable reverse logistics (SRL) capability is a new road for manufacturing companies, as it facilitates them to have more sustainable operations by increasing different performance outputs. This study aims to investigate the relationship between the SRL capability and the triple bottom line (TBL) i.e. economic, social and environmental performance in the context of Turkey's manufacturing industry. The mediating role of sustainability culture has also been examined.

Using survey data obtained from the Turkish manufacturing industry, the partial least square path modeling technique of structural equation modeling has been applied to test the research hypothesis.

The results of the study indicate that the SRL capability generates not only outstanding environmental and economic gains but also social benefits. The authors also find that sustainability culture is positively associated with environmental and social performance, yet not economic performance. In addition, the findings indicate sustainability culture mediates the relationship between SRL capability and social performance.

This study expands the frontier of managerial knowledge by highlighting the importance of SRL capability for sustainability and exhibiting evidence of the business value of enhancing SRL capability and sustainability culture.

The purpose of this study is to propose a new mapping tool called Circular Value Stream Mapping (C-VSM) that combines Circular Economy principles with Lean tools to enhance sustainability performance in operations.

To develop the C-VSM tool, the researchers conducted a literature review and a focus group. The tool was then applied to two real case studies in the agri-food sector, specifically analyzing an artichoke and olive oil producer, to assess its validity and effectiveness.

The study introduces the Circular Resource Box (CRB) as a key innovation in the C-VSM tool. This visual representation effectively captures resource circularity and how resources and wastes are managed, making it easy to identify circularity in the production process. By combining qualitative and quantitative information with this visual representation, companies can identify improvement opportunities aligned with the CE.

The research is limited in scope as it focuses on the application of the C-VSM tool in the agri-food sector. Further research could explore its applicability in other industries and settings to understand its broader impact.

The C-VSM tool provides practical benefits to companies seeking to transition from linear to circular production processes. It enables practitioners to identify opportunities to reduce environmental impacts and optimize production operations in line with CE.

The introduction of the C-VSM tool is a novel approach that bridges the gap between Lean Manufacturing and CE concepts, advancing the understanding of how CE thinking can be effectively implemented in operations.