[Context] Within the framework of PLM; Circular Economy (CE) is an important concept that seeks to design out waste and pollution, keep products and materials in use and regenerate natural systems. Early Design Stages are crucial because they set the foundation for the rest of the production process and can determine the product's overall functionality, usability, and manufacturing processes.

[Problem] As companies increasingly recognize the benefits of transitioning to a circular economy, there is a growing need for tools and methodologies to support the design of circular products and services.

[Proposal] This paper presents a CE card deck as a novel approach to facilitate the early stages of product development. The deck consists of 10 cards based on Morseletto's “Targets for a circular economy” work that represents mainstream circular economy principles and strategies and can be used by designers, engineers, and other stakeholders to generate ideas, evaluate options, and make informed decisions.

The results of a pilot study with design and engineering students (Master level) suggest that the card deck can support the exploration of CE concepts and facilitate the identification of circular solutions, in a Design by AM context (DbAM). The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential benefits and limitations of the card deck approach, and its integration into a PLM framework, and gives suggestions for future research.

The paper presents the result of developing an ideal release process based on the knowledge and experience of the Product Lifecycle Management and additive manufacturing (AM) groups at the ANONYMOUS. This process reflects modern computer-aided design (CAD) tools and their capability, e.g. to add the form and position tolerancing by 3D annotation (product manufacturing information, PMI). Furthermore, the understanding of additive manufacturing with the related requirements regarding “design for manufacturing” (DfM), especially “design for additive manufacturing” (DfAM), is also considered. Furthermore, the present way of designing AM parts (raw and final part) is reflected.

The paper shows the result of a related survey and the gap analysis, elaborating on the improvements which can be made. This knowledge is used in a running scientific project with an industrial partner to offer additive manufacturing services via a related internet platform, including an immediate and quantity-dependent price offer.

The additive manufacturing (AM) applications using collaborative robots (cobot) are rapidly increasing in the manufacturing field. The integration of AM with a cobot abilities can help prototyping and manufacturing custom-made parts in a more efficient way. This paper relies on manufacturing cell that combines a fused deposition modeling (FDM) extruder with a 6-axis cobot controlled by IoT edge computing devices. The production processes are designed in a robot simulation software, where digital twin (DT) of the manufacturing cell is available.

Direct and reverse communication between the simulation software and the physical manufacturing cell allows for implementing the real industrial cases. The manufacturing cell has been tested to demonstrate the viability of replacing traditional 3D printers in the industrial sector while taking advantage of working in a complex and dynamic environment. According to this approach this paper promotes the enlargement of the set of robot-abilities by adding additive manufacturing capabilities.