Motivation

While global supply chains have used digital technology for quite some time to increase effectiveness and efficiency of supply chain operations with the goal to drive down costs and sometimes increase revenue, environmental and social aspects have been neglected.

Sustainability is defined as the combination of people, plant and profit according to the Triple Bottom Line concept. Other approaches and initiatives like ESG and the UN Sustainable Development also have those 3 dimensions of sustainability.

For various reasons the transformation of global supply chain towards real sustainability has been slow and was mainly driven by major incidents like oil spills or detected human rights violation.

To show the value of a sustainable supply chain, give guidance on its transformation and provide accelerators for building sustainability solutions, Platform Industrie 4.0 (Digital Business Model working group) and the MIT Club of Germany (Sustainability working group) initiated the Sustainable Supply Chain Framework to accelerate the adoption of sustainable solution in global supply chains. Every day earlier a sustainability solution is in production can have a positive impact on people, planet and profit.

You can find a 15 minute video of the very first presentation of the Sustainable Supply Chain Framework on the Hannover Messe on the YouTube channel of the MIT Club of Germany as a recording.

Of course the framework has changes since its inception and as a open-source project this will continue.

We are grateful to our direct and indirect supporters of the framework. There is still much scope to cover in the future, so we invite every one who wants to make the world a better place and has knowledge in digital an/or sustainability to join us. Please reach out to peter.klement@alum.mit.edu to see if this project suits you and your are a good fit for this initiative.