PurposeThe increasing rate of environmental concern and awareness by society has attracted attention from researchers and organisations to consider how to proceed towards green supply chains. The purpose of this paper is to identify operational bottlenecks in the multi-tier supply chain to guide organisations towards where to concentrate their efforts to address their supply chain environmental challenges.Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents a literature review identifying green supply chain challenges of multi-tier supply chains. Following the literature review is a case study of the Ethiopian health supply chain with 11 interviews, 11 international and 6 national surveys and data from public health information systems. An analysis based on multi-tier supply chain modelling is used to identify environmental supply chain bottlenecks.FindingsThis research found that the supply chain actors face severe challenges towards enhanced green supply chain performance mainly because of poor inventory management (IN), inefficient tracking and tracing (TR) and fake or sub-standard products in the supply chain, especially counterfeit medicines (CO). Specific environmental bottlenecks within each of the challenge areas IN, TR and CO where identified serving as recommendations for where supply chain actors should focus their work towards greener supply chains.Research limitations/implicationsThe data come from participants in a single country, Ethiopia; although the supply chain challenges are common for developing countries in general.Practical implicationsThis research presents a modelling approach to identify supply chain activities considered as environmental bottlenecks in multi-tier supply chains. The environmental bottlenecks pinpoint supply chain activities to focus on for a transition towards green supply chains for manufacturers, public and private health organisations, hospitals and health care units.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the literature on GSCM by developing a multi-tier modelling approach for identifying environmental supply chain bottlenecks. The applicability of the model is demonstrated by the identification of environmental bottlenecks in a healthcare supply chain supporting decisions on what challenges a green supply chain strategy should address. It serves as a basis for future research on where to implement GSCM practices in supply chains (SCs).
The accelerated use of technologies has led to what is termed the fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0. It is based on machinery, robots, production lines, items and operators connected via the Internet to each other and to back-end systems, as a part of the Internet of Things (IoT). In this paper, we propose a new IoT Technological Maturity Assessment Scorecard that can assist manufacturers in adopting IoT-technologies. To demonstrate the Scorecard, we present a case study applying the scorecard in four Norwegian manufacturing companies.
The manufacturing industry has to withstand an increasing competition requiring customization of products, shorter time to market and a transition towards more sustainable operations and products. There is a need for a transition to business models that incorporate sustainability while keeping business activities profitable. Leveraging the advantages of new technologies within the concept of Industry 4.0 is seen as an important factor to maintain competitiveness while responding to the sustainability challenge. Changing the way businesses operate is not easy as is evident from studies that have identified many barriers, including costs, lack of competence, loss of jobs, and process, product or production facilities not suitable for Industry 4.0. Due to these barriers, firms are slow to make a transition towards customized products, shorter lead times and more sustainable operations and products. The commitment for sustainability includes a shift towards Circular Economy (CE) that poses additional barriers like geographic dispersion, product complexity, and lock-in to the contemporary linear 'take-makeconsume-dispose' model of operation. This paper addresses how manufacturers perceive Industry 4.0, what motivates their investments in Industry 4.0, and what barriers they see in adapting Industry 4.0 followed by a literature review identifying barriers for adhering to CE in the manufacturing industry sector. The study offers empirical insights identifying a need for a roadmap for implementation of Industry 4.0 to support CE as well as providing directions for future research.
Sustainability accounting is an emerging research area receiving growing awareness. This study examines the role of digital technology in manufacturing companies’ sustainability accounting. To guide the research, we use a triple layered business model canvas, which supports the accounting of a manufacturer’s performance for the economic, environmental, and social aspects of sustainability. We present an explorative case study of four Norwegian manufacturing companies representing different industries. The findings from the study indicate that while accounting for economic values is well taken care of, companies do not perform comprehensive environmental and social accounting. Furthermore, we observed a shift from a focus on sustainability issues related to the internal manufacturing process to a focus on sustainability issues for the life cycle of the product. Even though the manufacturers are at the forefront with regard to automation and control of production, with extensive use of robots giving a large amount of data, these data are not utilized towards sustainability accounting, showing that sustainability and digitalization are seen as two separate phenomena. This study sheds light on how digital data available from applied Industry 4.0 technologies could enhance sustainability accounting with limited efforts, linking sustainability and digitalization. The results provide insights for manufacturers and researchers in moving towards more sustainable operations and products.
There has been a strong growth in aquatic products supported by the global seafood industry. Consumers demand information transparency to support informed decisions and to verify nutrition, food safety, and sustainable operations. Supporting these needs rests on the existence of interoperable Internet of Things (IoT) platforms for traceability that goes beyond the minimum “one up, one down” scheme required by regulators. Seafood farmers, being the source of both food and food-information, are critical to achieving the needed transparency. Traditionally, seafood farmers carry the costs of providing information, while downstream actors reap the benefits, causing limited provision of information. Now, global standards for labelling, data from IoT devices, and the reciprocity of utility from collecting data while sharing them represent great potential for farmers to generate value from traceability systems. To enable this, farmers need an IoT platform integrated with other IoT platforms in the value network. This paper presents a case study of an enterprise-level IoT platform for seafood farmers that satisfies consumers’ end-to-end traceability needs while extracting data from requests for information from downstream actors.
In the transition to a circular focus on electric and electronic products, manufacturers play a key role as the originators of both the products and the information about the products. While the waste electric and electronic equipment (WEEE) directive’s contemporary focus is on handling the product as waste after its end of life, the circular economy focuses on retaining the product’s value with a restorative system. The polluter-pays principle requires producers of pollution to bear the costs of handling the pollution, leading to the extended producer responsibility (EPR) principle. This requires manufacturers to change their focus from their current passive role of out-sourcing end-of-life treatment to taking explicit responsibility for product management over an extended period of time. This paper investigates how a manufacturer can assume its responsibility to achieve circularity for its products. Based on our findings, three fundamental circularity principles, the circular electric and electronic equipment (CEEE) principles, for manufactures of electronic and electrical equipment are defined: (1) Serialize product identifiers, (2) data controlled by their authoritative source at the edge, and (3) independent actors’ access to edge data via a distributer ledger are the foundation of the Edge and Distributed Ledger (Edge&DL) model. We demonstrate the model through a case study of how to achieve circularity for lighting equipment. The CEEE principles and the demonstrated model contribute to building new circularity systems for electronic and electric products that let manufacturers undertake their extended product responsibility.
Moving towards more sustainable operations is a challenging goal for industries. The growth of interest in corporate sustainability performance has brought attention to the importance of accounting and transparency across economic, environmental and social dimensions. This paper provides an explorative study addressing sustainability from the perspective of industrial firms. The paper presents case studies on the application of the Triple Layered Business Model Canvas, which allows for relevant insight into how firms account for economic, environmental and social values. The findings show that while accounting for economic values is well taken care of, accounting for environmental values are at an initial stage, and accounting for social values are virtually lacking. Thus, the ability for the industrial firms to conduct a sustainability assessment is limited. The opportunities lie in the adaptation of digital technologies providing cost efficient feedback mechanisms for environmental and social values. This can support environmental and social accounting, giving industrial managers a decision management tool to guide their transition towards more sustainable operations, and aligning company goals with the UN Sustainable Development.
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