Industry 4.0 and the circular economy: a proposed research agenda and original roadmap for sustainable operations

This work makes a case for the integration of the increasingly popular and largely separate topics of Industry 4.0 and the circular economy (CE). The paper extends the state-of-the-art literature by proposing a pioneering roadmap to enhance the application of CE principles in organisations by means of Industry 4.0 approaches. Advanced and digital manufacturing technologies are able to unlock the circularity of resources within supply chains;...