The research behind more useful standards
A paper published on September 8 by researchers at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology examines what manufacturing needs to make circular production work at scale. The study appears in Smart and Sustainable Manufacturing Systems and focuses on research that can support future voluntary, consensus-based standards.
Its starting point is a practical gap. Products may be designed, sold, maintained and recovered by different organizations, each holding different information and using different measurements. The researchers organize the open questions into three connected areas: design for circularity, systems modeling and tools, and digital threads that link information across a product's life.
A roadmap built from industry input
The work builds on a 2022 ASTM survey and workshop about manufacturing materials. The paper reports 259 survey responses and uses that earlier exercise to identify research priorities behind needed standards. This is a review and research agenda, rather than a controlled trial showing that a particular circular business model has already succeeded.
That matters when interpreting the promise. Keeping a product useful for longer can involve repair, reuse, refurbishment or remanufacturing; recovering materials introduces another set of decisions. The paper argues for comparable metrics, test methods and interoperability so organizations can evaluate these routes with more consistent evidence.
Good design still needs a viable recovery system
Design for circularity asks how a product's materials, components and construction affect what can happen after its first use. The researchers identify a need for methods that help assess those choices and their consequences. A product that is technically recoverable still depends on the systems that collect, sort, repair or process it.
Systems modeling connects those stages. It can help examine how changes in one part of a product's life affect resource use and outcomes elsewhere. Our practical interpretation is that a manufacturer should define the comparison and the boundaries of the analysis before making an environmental claim. A local improvement needs to be evaluated alongside any additional transport, processing or other burdens it creates.
The information has to travel with the material
A digital thread connects information held in different systems so that it can remain useful across a product's life. For circular manufacturing, the paper highlights needs such as material traceability, disassembly guidance and information that supports recovery. It also identifies unresolved questions about which events and data should be recorded, how they should be shared and how the resulting system should be tested.
More data alone will not answer those questions. The authors discuss data quality, cybersecurity, privacy and the balance between protecting intellectual property and sharing information useful to recovery. They also call for cost-benefit evaluation of collecting and maintaining records. The useful test is whether the information changes a decision and remains reliable enough for the next organization to use.
What manufacturers can take from it now
For companies, the immediate value is a framework for finding gaps. Start with a product and one intended route after its first use. Identify who needs to make a decision, what measurements that decision requires and whether the necessary information survives the handover. That is our suggested way to turn the paper's research priorities into a bounded internal assessment.
The potential benefit is a more credible basis for keeping products and materials in use, with clearer evidence behind commercial and environmental claims. The unresolved work includes measurement methods, interoperable records and the economics of operating those systems. NIST's contribution is to make those research questions explicit, giving standards developers and manufacturers a more concrete agenda to test.
Sources & Methods
Checked September 8, 2026 against NIST's publication record and the full review paper, DOI 10.1520/SSMS20250023. The paper identifies pre-standardization research needs and is not a new regulation or a measured return-on-investment study. The suggested company assessment is Lumacta editorial analysis.
- NIST: Manufacturing in a Circular Economy — publication record — Primary source
- Full paper: Manufacturing in a Circular Economy — Primary source · peer-reviewed research paper