Enhancing Circular Economy Efficiency Through Digital Twins

Digital twins (DTs) are representations of real-world objects conceived to enhance the management of tangible goods. They mirror physical entities across various domains offering services such as description, diagnosis, monitoring, forecasting, and control. The rapid growth of DTs has attracted interest from stakeholders in circular economies (CEs). CEs are networks where different actors manage materials, and also information, in a non-linear manner. The primary goal of CEs is to minimize waste of resources and extraction of materials along the product chain. DTs are considered as the key digital enabler for reaching high efficiency throughout the value chain of CEs. This conceptual paper analyses the essential features characterizing CEs that need to be represented in the DT, including resource efficiency, longevity of products, circularity, and stochasticity. Each feature is analysed in terms of challenges companies face with developing and maintaining DTs for CEs.