Digi4Circular at GCSM 2026 in Colombo: Bringing Circular Economy Principles into Digital Product Development
From September 23 to 25, 2026, Katharina Rohde and Finn Lukas Budde from Universität Paderborn presented their research at the 22nd Global Conference on Sustainable Manufacturing (GCSM 2026) in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The conference ran under the theme “Circular Manufacturing for a Sustainable Future”.
A shared question
Both contributions address the same question: how can generic circular economy principles be integrated systematically into digital product development? Principles are usually formulated in general terms, while designers need concrete rules they can apply in the tools they use every day.
Mapping the current landscape
The Systematic Literature Review on the Formalization of Circular Economy Principles in Digital Product Development (Katharina Rohde, Finn Budde, Luisa Krogbäumker, Manuel Ott, Iryna Mozgova) shows that research has made significant progress. Semantic models and agents now connect design, materials and lifecycle stages with environmental constraints. CAD systems can process this information, and plugins enable automated checks.
The review also shows a limitation. Much of this work still functions as add-ons to existing tools rather than as a coherent architecture.
A concrete next step
The paper A Tool-Based Semantic Network Approach for Structured Design Rule Management in Circular Product Development (Finn Budde, Jasper Stichternath, Katharina Rohde, Manuel Ott, Iryna Mozgova) takes up this gap. It presents a semantic tool that puts the insights into practice. The tool:
- captures design rules in a structured way,
- translates them into machine-readable language,
- applies them directly in CAD and PLM systems.
While the literature review maps where the field stands today, the tool-based approach demonstrates a concrete next step toward integrating circular design rules into everyday engineering tools.
Part of Digi4Circular
Both works are part of Work Package 5 (Circular Component Design) of the Digi4Circular project.
