Potentials, Enablers and Barriers of a Circular Production System in a Lean Manufacturing Context : A Case Study at Scania

Sammanfattning: Exploitative and profit-oriented business operations are unsustainably depleting the world’s resources and extensively harm the environment. Linear production systems within the manufacturing industry are partly held responsible for this ongoing issue as materials and waste are not getting reused but dumped. An alternative to the traditional linear system that increasingly gets attention in the scientific literature is a Circular Production System within the Circular Economy framework, where waste is treated as resources and streamlined back into the production system to create closed resource loops. However, most manufacturing companies nowadays follow linear production systems and have implemented the Lean philosophy to maximize output and profits, leaving environmental aspects rather behind. This context needs to be considered, when thinking of implementing circular measures within a company. Therefore, this study focused on elaborating potentials, enablers and barriers of a Circular Production System in a Lean context. A case study has been conducted within the Swedish commercial vehicle company Scania, located in Södertälje, to gather empirical data about current lean and already ongoing circular practices in a real-life environment, and on future potential of extending circular measures. Internal benchmark studies, including observational studies and semi-structured interviews have been conducted along Scania’s industrial value chain. External benchmark studies contributed to obtain data about already ongoing CPS initiatives within the manufacturing industry. Following the empirical findings, this study suggests that potentials, enablers and barriers are categorized into system, process and product level, which are interdependent and interrelated. The research revealed that due to the many influences from departments along the value chain on the production, the system as a whole needs to be investigated. This study suggests the 4R framework (reduce, reuse, remanufacture, recycle) for implementing a cascaded use of materials. Implementing a new business model giving the product ownership back to companies would facilitate circular flows in the first place. Such a new business strategy can be supported by following more advanced design strategies, that extend the product life and maintain its performance. Lean, however, was found to bear conflict issues, but is considered still useful to some extent to reduce material inputs through more efficient processes.