Due to environmental pressures and limited raw material availability, the adoption of resource-efficient approaches is becoming increasingly important in the metalworking sector. This thesis focuses on tungsten carbide metal cutting tools, which present significant challenges for circular transitions owing to their critical material composition and high performance demands. The main objective is to identify practices, frameworks, and digital solutions that support a shift from linear to circular models in metalworking, with particular attention to traceability, collaboration, and lifecycle management.

The research design encompasses interviews, workshops, and on-site observations conducted with Swedish small and medium-sized enterprises in collaboration with a global tool manufacturer. By integrating these empirical insights with theoretical perspectives on circular economy, the study explores how a dynamic QR-code system can facilitate real-time data exchange, enhance reconditioning processes, and foster shared accountability. The analysis highlights frequent inefficiencies in material handling, limited communication across the supply chain, and fragmented decision-making procedures, all of which contribute to resource wastage and less circular production systems.

Key findings included several important points. First, Structured traceability solutions enhanced coordination, ensuring that worn tools were retrieved or remanufactured in a timely manner. Second, holistic production system thinking helps companies align their strategic aims with everyday shop-floor practices, thus bridging the gap between sustainability goals and operational realities. Finally, robust stakeholder engagement—spanning designers, operators, and refurbishing partners—proves vital for establishing a more efficient, digitally integrated network of tool users.

It can be concluded that combining collaborative frameworks, digital traceability, and system-wide decision-making offers a path for the metalworks sector to remain competitive while significantly reducing its environmental footprint. By integrating these measures into existing workflows, SMEs and larger enterprises can enhance resource utilization, extend tool lifespans, and improve their sustainability in an evolving global marketplace.

Manufacturing is under increasing regulatory and market pressure to reduce the demand for primary raw materials and retain value at the end of a product's life. In the metalworking sector, cemented carbide cutting tools present a high-value circular opportunity as they contain critical raw materials. However, successful recovery depends on tight coordination across a fragmented ecosystem that includes global tool manufacturers, machining small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), reconditioning providers, and recyclers. In practice, this coordination is often weak. Due to unclear decision rights, misaligned incentives, and trapped lifecycle data, cutting tools are frequently discarded before full utilisation or routed to lower-value recovery channels.This thesis explores how the metalworking industry can transition from fragmented, single-firm initiatives to systemic ecosystem orchestration. Employing a Design Science Research approach combined with an embedded case study of the Swedish metal-cutting ecosystem, the research is structured around two interconnected studies.The first study investigates current collaboration dynamics and structural constraints across the value chain to answer the first research question. It demonstrates that ecosystem collaboration is not a binary state but a developmental continuum. This analysis culminates in the Circular Collaboration Maturity Ladder, which proves that progressing from transactional exchanges to true network orchestration requires clarifying decision roles, standardising comparable evidence, and institutionalising feedback loops.The second study addresses the second research question by translating these empirical constraints into formal orchestration requirements across governance, information, and operational domains. It introduces the Circular Collaboration for Ecosystem Opportunities Mapping Canvas. This diagnostic artefact helps organisations systematically pinpoint internal capability gaps, search for optimal ecosystem partners, and align their collaborative actions with appropriate governance models. Furthermore, the study introduces the concept of minimum viable evidence, arguing that robust circular verification does not require heavy, comprehensive digitisation. Instead, it requires proportionate, low-friction datasets that protect SME data sovereignty and fit naturally into existing shop-floor workflows.Theoretically, this thesis extends the application of dynamic capabilities from internal firm strategy to ecosystem orchestration. It bridges the gap between macro-level focal firm ambitions and the micro-operational realities of the SME shop floor. Industrially, the research provides actionable frameworks that help practitioners design incentive-aligned service models, thereby making circularity the most viable and secure choice for the entire manufacturing supply chain.