Digitalization and the greening of supply chains

Abstract

PurposeThis study provides a reflective overview on the role of traditional and emergent digitalization and information technologies for leveraging environmental supply chain sustainability – while reflecting on potential trade-offs and conflicts of digitalization and greening.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use relevant literature and literature from Industrial Management and Data Systems (IMDS) research published in this journal over the past 50 years. They also use their knowledge and over 30 years of research experience in the field to provide professional scholarly reflections and perspective.FindingsThe authors provide a focused and succinct evaluation for research directions. A pressures, practices and performance framework sets the stage for pertinent research questions and theoretical needs to investigate the nexus of digitalization and green supply chain management. The authors provide two frameworks with exemplary practices and research for traditional and emergent digitalization and information technology. Their reflection concludes with a summary and steps forward.Social implicationsThe authors show how research and practice can be used to affect supply chain greening with digitalization and information technology. They observe that care should be taken given that these technologies can paradoxically simultaneously offer solutions to environmental degradation and potentially be a source of environmental degradation across the supply chain.Originality/valueThis work provides a summary and unique perspective that links traditional and emergent digitalization technology to green and environmental sustainability work. The area has not seen a clear summary and path forward and shows how IMDS literature has contributed to the field for decades.

Digitalizing the Closing-of-the-Loop for Supply Chains: A Transportation and Blockchain Perspective

“…Additional energy requirements will exist but can the benefits of RL and efficiency in application to environmental issues-such as recycling and resource management-overcome such additional energy usage is a question facing organizations and managers. Relatedly, the concerns for broader greening of supply chains with transportation as a focus may not be separable from the RL decisions, such as backhauling for RL, thus a more holistic planning with the complete greening of supply chains in addition to synergistic technologies (e.g., see [4]) should be carefully considered by managers and planner.…”

“…Although there has been a linkage of Industry 4.0 to circular economy practices (e.g., [2]), the nuances of transportation concerns within a closing-the-loop and RL operational context can use further investigation and development-especially within the context of RL which has seen limited emphasis in this environment and require further investigation [3]. In our case the industrial technology we discuss is blockchain technology, one of the most popular and hyped disruptive technologies within the Industry 4.0 conceptualization [4].…”

Digital battery passports to enable circular and sustainable value chains: conceptualization and use cases

“…Similar as in the section on the main category battery, at first DBP users require information, which allows them to clearly identify value chain stakeholders. In addition, such information enhances the transparency along the EVB value chain (Kouhizadeh et al, 2021;Sarkis et al, 2020). Thus, this subcategory allows to derive information such as actor name (e.g., company name), actor type and function (e.g., supplier of active material, electrode manufacturer), geographical location of the valueadding activity (e.g., production site of needed components), and identifier (e.g., trade registration number).…”

Guest editorial

“…Blockchain, IoT and cloud computing are example applications, where there is linkage to multiple groups of people and organizations, representing buyers, suppliers, developers, platform providers, communities, social agencies, individual investors and media, for example. Each of these groups and organizations represent different requirements and expectations (Sarkis et al , 2021).…”

“…We move from big data analytics as a digitization approach to one of the current “hottest” topics in supply chain digitization – blockchain technology (Kouhizadeh et al , 2021; Sarkis et al , 2021). There has been significant controversy about this multi-stakeholder digital technology, and similar to big data, as we discussed in the previous paper requires its own performance evaluation and how it contributes to the supply chain.…”