A worker wearing protective gear handles a tapered roller bearing in a factory

What we offer

Gearing up for a circular economy

Circular consulting

We supported a B2B industrial equipment brand to define a successful strategy for their transition to a circular economy, and the first steps on this journey.

Our team first sought to understand the organizational level of knowledge of a circular economy. Given that this maturity assessment indicated that the organizational prerequisites for creating real change were limited, we organized an all-staff circular economy introductory lecture and a circular economy workshop with the management team.

These interventions helped generate and evaluate implementable actions that could significantly accelerate the company’s transition toward a circular economy. A collection of short and mid-term suggested actions were collected, prioritized, and collated into high-impact initiatives. To ensure that the company wouldn’t get stuck in the piloting stage for too long, by having the capabilities for lasting change and scalable solutions, these actions were grouped into four enablers for a circular economy transition:

Design for circularity – the product design enables a circular economy business model

Circular resource flow – taking back products and components to enable repair, reuse, refurbishment, and remanufacturing, whilst mitigating supply chain risks. Circular economy intelligence – the organizational culture encourages knowledge & skills development to accelerate the transition to a circular economy through long-lasting change.

Ecosystem collaboration

– strong partnerships to catalyze the transition to a circular economy, based on:

A

Aligned incentives and motives

B

long-term perspective, beyond the current setup

C

In-depth involvement of product/services users

This project reconfirmed that a significant challenge for businesses that feel ready to implement circular economy strategies lies most often within their organizational structure than in the external systems.

We were excited to be able to provide the client with applicable insights and concrete steps to initiate their transition to a circular economy and look forward to working with more organizations to address this type of challenge.

Read the full article