How de-manufacturing supports circular economy linking design and EoL- a literature review

De-manufacturing is at the basis of the Industry of the Future that competitively and sustainably will manage natural resources. This review retrieved 106 papers investigating the main obstacles that prevent Circular Economy from being a reality and the possible actions to overcome them. The analysis of the literature outlined a great discussion regarding the key topics of CE, de-manufacturing, disassembly and re-manufacturing. The CREDIT analysis proposed by the authors clusters all the risen barriers in 6 factors (Culture, Resources, Economy, Design, Information, Technology) and 18 sub-factors. The CREDIT analysis highlights among the two most critical barriers, the costs of the activities that occur at the EoL stage and the urgency to train designers to approach design thinking to the whole Product Lifecycle; here an innovative focus of research can be more incisive to overcome the actual barriers. Future research needs to focus the attention on the potentialities hidden behind a strong cooperation between academies and enterprises in order to find a balance among the several existing DfX or unveil and tackle their single limitations. Cooperation (industrial symbiosis, academy, etc) and innovative technological solutions of industry 4.0 can help tackle the obstacles.