Development of a framework for circular economy assessment: Indicators for circular value chains

Industrial production is pivotal for the transition towards a sustainable circular economy, influencing the product lifecycle and facilitating the decoupling of economic growth from resource consumption. Despite potential benefits of the circular economy the adoption of circular practices is hindered by a limited understanding of circular economy principles. This study introduces a framework to evaluate progress in implementing circular practices within key business areas. It utilizes performance indicators, success factors, and metrics derived from a systematic literature review that combines deductive and inductive approaches, aided by machine learning techniques. It outlines core business areas across the value chain, from supporting activities such as organization, strategy, vision, and resilience or business model and innovation, to primary operational activities like material and resource use or production and optimization, assigning specific performance indicators, success factors, and metrics to each category. The development process resulted in the identification of 125 distinct metrics spread over 17 subcategories of the value chain. These metrics are divided into 80 qualitative and 45 quantitative metrics to enable an assessment of diverse organizational settings. The proposed framework serves as a robust tool for companies to critically assess and enhance their value creation processes within the circular economy, addressing prevalent deficiencies in the application and integration of circular practices.