Circular Economy Matrix Guiding Manufacturing Industry Companies towards Circularity: A Multiple Case Study Perspective

Manufacturing companies struggle with overwhelming expectations, disruptions andtrends sweeping over their business environment. The evident climate change, togetherwith rising sustainable development goals, is forcing companies to discover their environmental impact, in addition to the more familiar economic one. The transformation froma linear economy to a circular economy (CE) reduces waste and improves resource efficiency through the deployed R-cycles, such as recycle, reuse and repair. This transformation is feasible for multinational enterprises because they can allocate sufficient resourcesfor their strategic development goals. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SME),any additional investment must be carefully assessed and planned. Thus, SMEs need support and tools to select their next development investments. Generally, maturity modelshelp companies find their status (compared to others) and identify the most importantdevelopment areas and actions. This paper presents the CE maturity matrix, which comprises five maturity levels mapped with seven linear manufacturing value chain phases.The matrix was piloted with nine manufacturing industry companies, four of which werefrom Finland, one from Italy, one from Germany and three from Ireland. The CE matrixinterview results showed that none of the interviewed manufacturing industry companiesremained at the linearity level. The most common levels varied between systemic materialmanagement and CE thinking. In the interviews, over 40 CE actions were identified asthe argument for a company reaching a CE maturity level. The transition towards sustainable manufacturing has already started but will require efforts to accelerate and to engagecompanies to proceed.