Sustainability Assessment in Automotive and Electronics Supply Chains—A Set of Indicators Defined in a Multi-Stakeholder Approach

Abstract

Abstract:In automotive and electronics supply chains, sustainability assessment is gaining increasing importance. More stringent regulations and growing customer pressure are driving the change towards more environmentally, socially and economically responsible supply chains. Since this implies a rising use of resources for data collection, monitoring, exchange and assessment, the objective of this paper is to facilitate supply chain sustainability assessment. The present paper first provides a tailored set of 69 supply chain sustainability indicators for the European automotive and electronics industries. These were derived on the basis of a systematic literature review, together with 13 semi-structured interviews and five focus group workshops, all of which involved sustainability and industry experts. Second, the paper provides a case example of software-based supply chain sustainability data exchange. The extent to which sustainability information is currently exchanged in the two industries is also analyzed. The set of indicators is scientifically relevant since it considers all three dimensions of sustainability and is intended to allow for supply chain-wide sustainability assessment in two specific industries. It is also of high practical relevance since it was developed with and validated by industry experts, and also since it considers industrial and technical requirements for supply chain sustainability assessment in order to increase the efficiency of the work processes.

Uncovering Productivity Gains of Digital and Green Servitization: Implications from the Automotive Industry

“…The significant impact of the automotive industry on the environment has attracted increased research in the last decade [8][9][10]20,37,41,45,47,51,55,61,70,74,76]. This impact encompasses the effect on the environment of energy, material and water consumption, producing pollution and requiring waste disposal [20,21,49].…”

“…This impact encompasses the effect on the environment of energy, material and water consumption, producing pollution and requiring waste disposal [20,21,49]. The automotive industry is thus facing many demands related to reduction of CO 2 emissions and end-of-life automobile management [21,43,74]. These demands involve both burdens and opportunities for developing new business models.…”

“…Through such complementarity, both service concepts aim to optimize (efficiently and sustainably) the total pool of resources through the support of ICT capabilities. Such synergies not only enable multiple operational benefits (described above) [14,16,17,64,65] but also provide the necessary means to meet environmental regulatory requirements [42,74]. Arguing a positive mutually reinforcing effect between digital and green servitization in operations performance, we therefore hypothesize the following:…”

“…They thus facilitate alignment of a company's operations with environmental constraints to ensure sustainability of operations. At European level, the European Union (EU) has introduced the end-of-life (ELV) directive to enhance environmental sustainability from vehicle manufacturing by promoting initiatives such as collection, reuse and recycling of components through the entire process [74]. To this end, green services provide support for assessing and controlling proper execution of initiatives established by regulatory frameworks through monitoring, measuring and analyzing information to control sustainability performance on a timely basis [72,75].…”

Develop Eco-Friendly Enterprise: Aligning Enablers with Strategy

“…Environmental concerns from consumers, governments, and academics have encouraged businesses to introduce environmentally friendly practices that are able to mitigate negative impacts on the environment, (e.g., green management, green marketing, green production, green innovation [3]). In fact, firms have long recognized that being competitive depends on their internal operations as well as the entire supply chain [4,5]. Thus, the management of supply chain is the key to business sustainability.…”