NIST maps the missing standards behind circular manufacturing

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.

Follow one pump through repair, reuse and retirement

Imagine a factory pump arriving at a repair workshop. Its label identifies a product family, but not the installed revision, service history or materials in a replaced component. A technician may be able to repair it physically and still lack the information needed to decide whether reuse is safe, economical or preferable to replacement. This is an illustrative case, not a NIST pilot we observed.

The fields are useful only if they travel with the actual unit and their origin can be checked. A digital record copied from a similar product could make a wrong decision easier rather than prevent it. The workshop also needs a way to mark a missing measurement, a replaced part or an uncertain material instead of forcing every field to look complete.

The environmental comparison needs a boundary too. Compare equivalent service delivered over a stated period, including transport, repair inputs, operating energy and the new equipment that would otherwise be needed. A repaired but inefficient unit is not automatically the lower-impact choice. NIST’s roadmap identifies work toward better decisions and interoperable information; it does not supply a universal “circular” pass mark.