The Reincarnate’s mission is to expand our Community of Practice and connect with relevant networks and stakeholders through our circular alliances. Recently, we have established contact with a new project that shares our vision when it comes to circularity.
Today, we are calling to the stage the CIRCULOOS project to learn more about the transformative opportunity they offer for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) towards a circular economy.
CIRCULOOS has received funding from the European Union’s “Horizon Europe” programme under grant agreement 101092295.
Let’s see our commonalities and approaches to circularity in the construction sector!
What is the CIRCULOOS project about, could you describe it briefly?
CIRCULOOS aims to deliver digital tools and business practices to small manufacturing companies in Europe in support of their transition towards more circular manufacturing processes. These tools target the orchestration and optimisation of their supply chains by integrating them into their existing planning and production monitoring infrastructure. Combining these with direct calculation of the product sustainability and circularity profile will enable them to create new circular manufacturing processes leveraging on lessons learnt from the better-known R-strategies, such as recycling or embracing others like repairing and remanufacturing.
What are your objectives?
The project aims to innovate the manufacturing sector by developing agile and circular supply chains through five main objectives:
- Create an agile circular manufacturing supply chain architecture and platform: acting on the need for more efficient and open data sharing practices, CIRCULOOS incorporates software components from the FIWARE Reference Architecture for Digital Twins and extends them with modules that increase cybersecurity, facilitate the interaction between commercial entities and cultivate an environment of trust.
- Assess the environmental performance of supply chains: To enable data-driven decision-making, supply chains are assessed in terms of their ability to maintain resources inside the circular context, and these chains are compared based on their environmental footprint. To this end, a Life Cycle Assessment module starts from widely accepted standards (e.g. ISO 14040/14044) and builds a supply chain sustainability engine that allows beyond-project sustainability impact assessment.
- To develop the environment for cybersecure and trusted exchange of data: modern data analytics architectures usually include fault-tolerant Identity and Access Management (IAM) mechanisms by design. CIRCULOOS incorporates, in addition, the concept of immutable data in its architecture by integrating with the trust framework of blockchain networks.
- Funding the formation of new circular teams: With a budget of 3.6 million euros for open calls, the project encourages SMEs to design recycling, remanufacturing, or refurbishment cases using the CIRCULOOS platform. These experiments aim to showcase improvements in sustainability and the viability of new circular business models.
- Magnify the impact of the results: The project intends to integrate its services with the RAMP marketplace, providing additional resources for collaboration, training in circular manufacturing, and business model planning. The extended RAMP platform will leverage the extended ecosystem of DIHs to ensure long-term sustainability and impact.
Overall, the project represents an effort to advance the manufacturing industry towards more sustainable, efficient, and circular practices through technological innovation and collaboration.
Which are the main challenges that you face?
The main challenges we face include first the skilling and re-skilling of workers to adapt to new technologies, also ensuring the trustworthiness of data and processes within our operations, and of course identifying the MSMEs interested in participating in Circuloos Open Calls. These challenges underscore the importance of continuous learning and adaptation in the workforce, the integration of reliable and secure technological solutions, and the need to engage and support small and medium-sized enterprises in embracing innovation opportunities.
Tell us about your pilots and how you will empower MSMEs to embark on their circularity journey
CIRCULOOS is advancing circular manufacturing with three pilots by using RAMP platform.
- The first one focuses on recycling plastics in Spain. Key participants include Thermolympic, manufacturing and recycling plastic parts for automotive, Contenedores Lolo for plastic collection, and Canonical Robots providing technology support. The main goal is to optimise the supply chain, enhance data sharing on recycled plastic qualities and requirements, and expand sources of recycled materials. RAMP platform will be the tool used to reach it by ensuring secure data exchange and assessing environmental impacts to certify sustainability.
- The second CIRCULOOS pilot targets leather waste in manufacturing, involving two Hungarian companies. Khoani, a fashion leather goods maker, and B&A, needing small leather pieces for crafts. Khoani currently disposes of its waste, raising costs and environmental impact, while B&A overstocks due to supply mismatches. By using Digital Twin technology, the project aims to optimise reuse of leather waste, improving supply chain efficiency and reducing waste by enabling secure data exchange between participants. The implementation of the technology will improve production planning and create the potential trading of leather waste on the RAMP platform.
- The last CIRCULOOS pilot in the Netherlands targets wood manufacturing, involving three companies: Fiction Factory (a wood crafting firm for interior design), Plennid (a wood supplier), and Herso (focused on sustainable wood products). The challenge is to ensure a continuous supply of sustainable wood, which is difficult due to sourcing and communication issues. The pilot aims to streamline this process using CIRCULOOS for better supply overview and RAMP for supply facilitation and recycling. This will enhance supply chain efficiency, sustainability, and the circularity of wood used in Fiction Factory’s products.
Which outcomes do you expect to get at the end of the project?
CIRCULOOS is interested in developing technical tools as well as business practices that make the transition to circular economy easier for smaller manufacturing companies. The project has already made good progress with respect to the development of its data platform, enabling the connection to the production schedules and where possible the ERP systems of our pilot partners. The appropriate data models are going to be developed in the early phases of the project as well to put in place a common information model. The integration to the blockchain network will open new opportunities for our marketplace to integrate functionalities for smart contracts and immutability of the data published. These technical tools will be further enhanced with a decision support engine facilitating the establishment of new partnerships – optimal in the sense of being most sustainable – Digital Twins for the monitoring of critical production phases and Process Automation for the orchestration of dynamically formed supply chains. Towards the end of the project, the partners want – beyond the technical implementation – to create the success stories that work as examples for new business entities with the drive to transition to more sustainable production practices.
What do you think about projects such as CIRCULOOS and Reincarnate and their importance for the construction industry?
Although CIRCULOOS focuses mainly on manufacturing SMEs, you can see directly from our wood pilot that there is inevitably common ground with the construction industry. This is nothing more than an indication that when discussing circular practices, there can be no isolation between industries and stakeholders. This constitutes an important mind-shift for current production or construction practices.
Moving away from more traditional supply models, actors now need to think broader. The right resources may not be in the usual places where they used to buy virgin material, but they could be found in new and unexpected partnerships.
We feel that CIRCULOOS and Reincarnate are in a position to create such examples of new and unexpected partnerships, which, even if they don’t reshape the construction industry, can inspire new and eager players in the market!
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