EC4 - AI and Blockchain for Circular Supply Chain Management

This postgraduate course examines how artificial intelligence and blockchain can be used to enable efficient, transparent, and sustainable circular supply chains. It focuses on applying tools such as predictive analytics, digital twins, and smart contracts to improve traceability, optimise material flows, and reduce waste across product lifecycles. Through applied examples and case studies, students develop the technical, analytical, and ethical skills needed to design and manage AI and blockchain driven supply chain solutions aligned with circular economy principles.

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Intelligent Supply Chain Optimisation

Blockchain-Based Traceability

Strategic Supply Chain Transformation

Your 13-Week Journey

Understanding circular supply chains, enablers, barriers, and digital transformation drivers.

Using AI for forecasting, optimisation, and data-driven circular decisions.

Exploring blockchain for secure, transparent, and trusted supply-chain data.

Combining intelligence and decentralisation for real-time circular supply chains.

Ensuring provenance, transparency, and lifecycle visibility with digital tools.

Applying AI to minimise waste and improve resource efficiency.

Automating sustainable transactions and compliance in circular supply chains.

Modelling circular supply networks to optimise flows and performance.

Managing data, privacy, and ethical challenges in digital supply chains.

Analysing real world applications in circular logistics and reverse flows.

Using digital indicators to assess circular and environmental performance.

Addressing adoption barriers and emerging innovations in circular supply chains.

Applying international standards for trust, interoperability, and sustainability.

Week 1 — Systems in Transition

See the world in systems.

Learn to rethink linear vs circular economies and explore planetary boundaries.

Week 2 — The Digital–Circular Nexus

Discover how tech enables sustainability.

Explore how AI, IoT, and data power circular innovation.

Week 3 — Policy as Infrastructure

Understand Europe’s circular blueprint.

Dive into the EU Green Deal, CEAP, and Digital Europe frameworks.

Week 4 — Designing for Re-entry

Design for durability, reuse, and remanufacturing.

Learn how digital twins and simulation tools extend product lifecycles.

Week 5 — Tracking Resources Through Data

Follow materials in motion.

Understand how IoT and data infrastructures create transparency in supply chains.

Week 6 — Blockchain for Accountability

Trust through transparency.

Explore blockchain’s potential for tracking, verification, and ethical assurance.

Week 7 — Learning Loops with AI

Let data drive regeneration.

See how AI and machine learning enable adaptive circular decision-making.

Week 8 — Cognitive Factories

Meet the new industrial symbiosis.

Examine how robotics and smart manufacturing create circular production systems.

Week 9 — Reverse Intelligence

Close the loop through recovery.

Explore reverse logistics, digital disassembly, and resource recovery networks.

Week 10 — Measuring Circularity

Turn data into progress.

Use metrics, KPIs, and dashboards to track circular performance.

Week 11 — Financing the Regenerative Future

Empower innovation.

Discover how deep-tech, investment, and valuation models support circular ventures.

Week 12 — Ethics and Mindsets

Lead with responsibility.

Reflect on ethics, human–machine collaboration, and the competences for circular leadership.

Week 13 — 2040 and Beyond

Imagine the future you want to build.

Learn to rethink linear vs circular economies and explore planetary boundaries.