Circular Economy in Plastic Pallet Manufacturer (PPM) using Nano Level Material Circularity Indicator (MCI)

Abstract

The circular economy concept is an industrial system concept with a restorative and/or regenerative design, which is closely related to the material flow. The implementation of a circular economy in a system begins with an initial design based on an assessment of the circularity of the existing system. Of several circularity assessment tools, the Material Circularity Indicator (MCI) was chosen because the assessment is quantitative. The object of this research is Plastic Pallet Manufacturer (PPM) with its main product, namely plastic pallets where the product characteristics are unique, namely between functional products and innovative products. The Nano Level model is implemented to capture material flow at the operational level where PPM has two different flows, namely open and closed in its manufacturing program. Implementing the Nano Model to MCI to conduct an assessment requires adjustments, namely changing the goal from previously assessing a product to assessing a production as a whole. In this study, the implementation of Nano Level MCI succeeded in assessing the production in the latest PPM with an average index of 0.79 which means that the system in PPM is quite circular. Then, the recommendation for improvement with the addition of workstations resulted in an increase in the average index to 0.80.