Over the last few years, manufacturers have been encouraged to maximise the value of their products and simultaneously eliminate disparate wastes in their supply chains (SCs) through circular economy (CE). The Ellen MacArthur Foundation described CE as ‘an industrial system that is restorative and regenerative by design’. CE emphasises a circular approach to materials and energy in SCs for yielding economic, environmental and social benefits through process and product innovations. In this study, Arijit Bhattacharya and colleagues map the scope and structure of circularity in the manufacturing SC discipline and explore the evolution of the domain over time. Published in the journal, 'Business Strategy and the Environment,' this research article reviewed 946 journal articles published between 2013 and September 2023 to identify key drivers and barriers to circular economy (CE) deployment in manufacturing SC operations, bibliometric parameters, emerging research themes, decision support tools, theories and applications.

The research group leveraged theory extension approach, to propose a strategic framework to fortify the deployment of circularity in SCs. This study lays the foundation for comprehensive research into circular manufacturing SC operations, setting the stage for future investigations.

They posit that manufacturing firms are required to deploy innovation-led approaches to embed the CE strategies in their SC operations. They found that the studies investigating green skill development and circularity-culture adoption can facilitate manufacturers to understand the efficacy of circularity in their SC operations. These findings can facilitate the practitioners to identify the links between the CE approaches and their strategic implications and examine CE implementation at the strategic level.