Guiding Innovations and Value-Chain Improvements Using Life-Cycle Design for Sustainable Circular Economy

EasyChair Preprint 7530

Abstract

While the current linear state of the economy has led to large scale natural-resource exploitation and pollution, circular economy can also lead to unexpected harm to environmental sustainability. Thus, there is a need to design product value-chains to achieve a Sustainable and Circular Economy (SCE). Previous work has focused on developing a systems engineering framework using life-cycle assessment with ‘superstructure’ network optimization to find optimal value-chain pathways while considering product life-cycles. However, the role of innovations in the form of novel technologies, societal action and new policy action has become increasingly crucial to establish SCE. In this work, we propose a sensitivity optimization framework to find the most attractive innovation directions within the value-chain using parameter perturbations as additional decision variables over pathway choice. The objectives include maximizing circularity and minimizing carbon dioxide emissions. We quantify the trade-off between these objectives and determine win-win innovative solutions using pareto and perturbation fronts. The method is demonstrated for an illustrative example, and its applicability to real value-chain networks has been probed.

Keyphrases: Sustainability, circular economy, innovation design, life cycle, life cycle optimization, sustainable circular economy, value chain

@booklet{EasyChair:7530,
  author    = {Vyom Thakker and Bhavik Bakshi},
  title     = {Guiding Innovations and Value-Chain Improvements Using Life-Cycle Design for Sustainable Circular Economy},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 7530},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2022}}