Value Systems for the Parallel Implementation of Value-Retention Circular Strategies in the White Goods Industry

Transitioning to a circular economy fundamentally changes the traditional, linear economic model. Establishing circular strategies requires adapting and expanding the roles within the value system to realize the decoupling of economic growth and resource consumption. In particular, a combination of several value-retention strategies implemented in parallel can increase the ecological and economic potential of circular economy. However, there is a lack of description of this type of value system in relation to the new required activities, and the resulting material and information flows within the value system. For this reason, literature research and exploratory analyses through expert workshops were used to identify variants for implementing the value system. The results include the definition of five possible variants of a value system for the parallel implementation of value-retention circular strategies in the white goods industry. The five possible variants are necessary to enable sustainable collaboration strategies between different stakeholders from which all of the stakeholders can benefit. The new activities for enabling the various value-retention strategies, e.g., product evaluation or disassembly, are distributed differently across the stakeholders of the value systems per variant. This leads to distinct material and information flows per variant.