Digital Twin for Circular Economy

Digital twins offer a promising approach to sustainable value creation by providing a specific data base for the monitoring and execution of circular economy strategies. By analyzing product, component and material as well as process data, it is possible to create transparency throughout a products lifecycle and address current challenges such as climate change and resource scarcity. The concept of a digital twin for circular economy enables to build a data-driven ecosystem and supports new business and value creation models from SMEs to large enterprises. This paper identifies application scenarios, their technological readiness level and challenges of digital twins for circular economy in the manufacturing industry based on a systematic literature review. As a second result, a generic concept of a digital twin for circular economy is presented.