Cross-organisational material traceability in a circular economy
Circular value chains depend on the ability to follow materials across organisational boundaries, including their origin, processing steps, current location, and quality attributes. In battery recycling and similar contexts, materials may pass through many actors with different data systems, terminology, and confidentiality requirements. Effective circular flows require shared understanding of what is being traced — but data sharing also raises strategic concerns about exposing commercially sensitive information.
The SDR challenge concerns the semantic readiness of traceability information across organisational boundaries. Different actors describe the same physical material in fundamentally different ways, and standards are still emerging. Without explicit semantic structure, traceability either fails (terms don't align) or forces over-sharing (organisations must reveal more than necessary). The case studies how shared meaning can be established without forcing uniform tools or full data disclosure — a balance between openness and protection.
How does Semantic Data Readiness affect the practical feasibility and business value of cross-organisational material traceability in circular value chains?
Explicit semantic structure for material objects, provenance, and processing steps enables traceability that is both operationally useful and respectful of commercial boundaries — increasing the willingness of actors to participate in circular ecosystems.
Synthetic or open datasets representing battery and material flows will be used to study how semantic structuring affects traceability quality, interoperability, and the ability to combine information from multiple actors without forcing full data centralisation.
Practical exploration focuses on real recycling flows and the conditions under which actors are willing to share semantically structured traceability information. The case provides empirical grounding on when shared meaning creates business value, and when local capability dominates.
Links to Digital Product Passport and compliance cases (UC007, UC011) where traceability evidence is required across organisational boundaries, and to long-lifecycle governance challenges (UC006).