Manufacturing Network Topologies for Sustainable Production

The linear transformation of finite resources to consumer electronics which are disregarded as waste after ever shorter lifespans is becoming notably problematic from both societal and ecological perspective. Increasing concerns for climate change and resource shortages as well as global supply chain disruptions highlight the deficits of linear economy. The alternative concept of circular economy introduces multiple sustainable strategies to traditional waste management at different points in a typical products lifespan, namely reduce, reuse, recycle, recovery, redesign, and remanufacturing (6R). However, circular economy has seen little adaption in practice. A major obstacle in the implementation of circular practices into production processes lies within the associated costs on the one hand, and the still relatively cheap access to virgin raw materials in large quantities from rather centralized supply systems on the other hand. Sustainable sourcing alternatives are typically characterized by limited local supply due to the corresponding catchment areas of recycling systems. Consequently, circular economy approaches lead to a more decentralized supply networks, increasing logistics costs and questioning established manufacturing topologies. In this article, we develop a minimal mixed-integer linear program in order to compare various spatial manufacturing topologies and supply networks with regard to linear and circular economy concepts. Considering the computational cost for established optimization concepts, we sketch a possible distributed approach to compare different manufacturing topologies and discuss their implications for practice and theory.