Abstract
The circular economy has gained attention in recent years as a sustainable alternative to the current linear economic model. Supply chains have an essential role in the transition towards a circular economy. However, the transition towards circular supply chains is challenging for companies due to the lack of knowledge and awareness among the supply chain members. In order to overcome this barrier, the CircuSChain Game was developed based on the well-known Beer Distribution Game. The CircuSChain Game is a multi-player board game supported by a calculation sheet. The game considers reuse, refurbishing, remanufacturing, and recycling activities within closed-and open-loops, as well as CO2 emissions and material scarcity concepts. An experiment was conducted with industrial engineering students in order to test the CircuSChain Game and assess its educational value, game pace, entertainment value, and simplicity.
TopBackground
In this section, the context of this work is described. First, the Circular Economy and the Circular Supply Chains are introduced, including its activities and loops, which will be present in the CircuSChain Game. Second, the serious games in the literature about Circular Supply Chains or their related domains are presented.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Closed-Loop Activity: Circular Economy activities allow revaluating used products for the same purpose, integrating them into the linear Supply Chain of the original product. For example, closed-loop reuse, closed-loop refurbishing, etc.
Reuse: Reselling used products with minor modifications.
Circular Supply Chain: Management process of material and information flows, starting with raw material extraction activity, encompasses production, distribution, use, collection, and Circular Economy activities, and ends with landfilling. Circular Supply Chains consist of a combination of closed- and open-loops.
Refurbishment: Replacing the critical parts of a used product in order to bring it to a specific quality.
Remanufacturing: Replacing a significant amount of used product’s parts, in order to bring it a like-new quality.
Open-Loop Activity: Circular Economy activities, also called repurposing activities, allow revaluating used products for a different purpose from the original one, integrating them into the linear Supply Chain of another product. For example, open-loop reuse, open-loop refurbishing, etc.
Linear Supply Chain: Management process of material and information flows, starting with raw material extraction activity, encompasses production, distribution and use activities, and ends with landfilling.
Repurposing: Reprocessing used product in order to give it another function through reuse, refurbishing, remanufacturing or recycling activities. These activities constitute open-loops.
Open-Loop: Material flow, starting with collection activity, encompassing Circular Economy activities, and integrating into a different linear supply chain of another product different from the original one.
Recycling: Transforming used products into materials in order to use them in production activities.
Reverse Logistics: Management process of return flows (closed or open-loops) in a Circular Supply Chain.
Circular Economy Activity: Reprocessing activity allows maintaining used products value by integrating them into linear supply chains through closed- or open-loops.
Closed-Loop: Material flow, starting with collection activity, encompassing Circular Economy activities, and integrating into the linear Supply Chain of the original product.