Circular economy and process and product quality control systems

Abstract

Environmental protection is of growing academic and business interest because of pollution and inadequate waste management. The Circular Economy (CE) emerges as a strategy to combat these repercussions and change from a linear model to a circular one to close cycles and return most of the waste to the production stage. On the other hand, quality control can help companies achieve the desired circularity and ensure stability in achieving their CE objectives by using appropriate tools. This paper aims to analyze CE practices in process and product quality control systems through a bibliometric and taxonomic analysis. The results show that research interest and contributions in the issue have increased in the last four years and that the countries with the highest participation are Italy, Spain, and China. Most of the contributions are practical, with proposals for strategies focused on companies or processes. According to the approaches, it is concluded that the authors have a great interest in contributing business models, frameworks, and strategies to help companies address CE practices for processes and products.