Towards a Data Classification Model for Circular Product Life Cycle Management

Nowadays, due to the limited availability of resources, the adoption of sustainable practices is gaining importance, especially while dealing with the manufacturing sector that is considered one of the most resource greedy sectors. To cope with this issue, a new sustainable and industrial economy, called “circular economy” arisen. The diffusion of this economy can be eased by the advance management of data and information. Nevertheless, from the extant literature emerged some criticalities regarding information management flows while dealing with circular economy strategies adoption. Indeed, the present work aims to first identify the main criticalities in information management while adopting circular economy principles, and second to investigate the decisions, and the related data and information required to make these decisions, that manufacturers have to undertake to enable the circular product life cycle management. To achieve this goal, the present work relies on the scientific literature. This choice enables to grasp the widespread knowledge developed by scholars about these concepts, by individualizing the main decisions that should be taken by the company internal stakeholders, to manage circular products, being affected by external stakeholders’ behaviours and decisions along product life cycle. Therefore, this work aims to support circular product life cycles management and, this objective has been achieved through the development of a data classification model