A Lean Approach to Developing Sustainable Supply Chains

Abstract

Corporations and their supply chains have to go through significant changes to become more sustainable as society is pressing for sustainable systems. To this end, it is critical to develop new methodologies to trim away processes and activities that add no value and, thus, derive more sustainable supply chains. Considering the need to have a simple tool that can be used by managers to achieve this goal, in this work, we explore the value stream mapping method (VSM) and extend it to support the design of sustainable supply chains in a more systematic and quantitative way. This work proposes a new generic methodology, called SustainSC-VSM, which allows assessing the supply chain’s performance through a set of realistic indicators. These indicators are designed to identify bottlenecks that hinder sustainable operations development and provide guidelines to achieve that goal by following a lean-driven sustainability approach. SustainSC-VSM was tested and validated through its application to a relevant industrial case study, where operational bottlenecks were pinpointed and potential solutions were identified to seek continuous improvement. Although envisioned to be generic and applicable to all supply chains, the indicators should be selected according to the context in study (e.g., services). SustainSC-VSM aims at being a generic and systematic tool to design future value stream maps to achieve a more sustainable supply chain following a lean-driven sustainability approach, through the use of multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary indicators to identify and solve the supply chain’s bottlenecks.

Innovating the management of supply chains for social sustainability: from the state of the art to an integrated framework

“…Additionally, in the context of assessing workplace safety within a supply chain, an indicative metric linked to social sustainability can be introduced. One frequently employed metric is the ratio of average injury-free days to the total days worked per employee (Guo and Wu, 2022; Narimissa et al ., 2020b; Mastos et al ., 2022; Gargalo et al ., 2021; Pishvaee et al ., 2012).…”

“…This involves the implementation of guidelines and programs aimed at regulating anti-corruption practices among suppliers, who must comply with the prescribed regulations and abstain from engaging in corruption activities, price-fixing or forming cartels to gain undue advantages. Quantifiable metrics in this category should demonstrate how the companies ensures equal opportunities for all employees and guarantee non-discrimination or non-corruption (Gargalo et al, 2021;Popovic et al, 2018;Yakovleva et al, 2012). 3.2.2.5 Innovation and competitiveness.…”

Management and Production Engineering Review

“…This paper aims at providing a design framework to support just that. Gargalo et al (2021) provide an excellent overview of VSM enhancements in different domains, while focusing on additions to prepare VSM for sustainability analysis of material flows.…”

Performance Assessment on the Application of Artificial Intelligence to Sustainable Supply Chain Management in the Construction Material Industry

“…Such a goal could hardly be realized under a traditional industrial supply chain because of more complicated supply chain participants, inconsistent information systems, more manual intervention, and a lack of production and manufacturing effectiveness and high efficiency. Suppliers could not guarantee the quality to result in excessive products being recalled [14]. For this reason, the realization of supply chain whole process visualization becomes the key in artificial intelligence supply chain.…”