Project Title: Adopting new technologies for sustainable supply chain

Introduction:
Supply chain sustainability includes best practices and technologies that take into account the
environmental, social and legal aspects of a supply chain’s components as well as their economic factors.
Achieving this goal necessitates the involvement of the entire supply chain. In order to meet the needs of
customers and markets, manufacturers need up-to-date and accurate information about their suppliers’
materials and components. Previously, supply chain was mostly about logistics and keeping track when
and where goods were moving. The changing face of supply chain and digitization has led to more
visibility and analytics tools which have provided companies with the ability to gather data about how
well each element in the supply chain demonstrates corporate social responsibility. Therefore, this
transparency has led to responsible sourcing and encouraged supply chain partners to develop and share
best practices for green operations and logistics.

New technologies have positively impacted the way a supply chain functions. For instance it is being
discussed on various forms across globe that how supply chain stakeholders can reduce their
environmental impact by adopting Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) technology & circular economy thus
inching towards environmental sustainability.

Just for instance, Major technology providers like IBM and Microsoft are investing in infrastructures to
support blockchain; hence making it easier for a number of applications to move in this direction.
Functioning as a single source of truth, blockchain can change the way business transactions take place.
Such visibility will help ensure efficient transactions, while promoting food safety, efficient recalls, the
elimination of counterfeits, and the assurance of ethical trading partners.

The goal of supply chain sustainability is to create, protect, and grow long-term environmental, social and
economic value for all stakeholders involved in bringing products and services to the market. New
technologies are now making things easier in the form of new software and applications which are meant
to ease numerous tasks and at the same time encourage supply chain sustainability. Innovative training
and development programs using modern tools for learning represent a great way to educate employees
about supply chain sustainability and hence encourage them to work towards this objective.

Literature review:

Key findings of the reviewed research papers are as follows:

1. In one of the research it was stated that how supply chain technology is a significant moderator
on the relationship between supply chain strategies and firm performance. Stepwise multiple
regression analysis was done to ensure the accuracy of the predictive relationships given that
several indicators were used to measure the study variables.
2. Within the context of circular economy, study the sustainability of the Supply Chain; to transform
the organization from linear economy to circular economy by implementing the 6R’s; to leverage
technology across supply chain so that the organization is more sustainable in terms of social
accountability, environment awareness and economic practices.
3. One of the research studies argued emphasized on maximizing IT investment which could lead
firms to higher profitability and effectiveness.
4. One of the research indicated the overall impact of DTT (digital transformation technologies) on
the social and environmental dimension of supply chain impact of DTT (digital transformation
technologies) seems to be moderately positive.
5. Theoretical reference for operational decisions of enterprises for their supply chain management
in the IoT context were also studied through which firms and their supply chain management can
 better understand consumers’ behaviors and value judgments, and adjust their operational
strategies accordingly.
6. Study of effect of combining a multitude of technologies spanning across different domains such
as semantics, AI, integration approaches and IoT management platforms which can prove both
challenging and beneficial in order to increase the level of situational awareness around the status
of a supply chain and its dependencies.
7. Industry 4.0 technologies (Blockchain, nanotechnology, mobile technology, simulation and
drones) have the highest impact on sustainability in the automotive, electronics, food and
beverage, and textile, apparel and footwear industries, respectively.
8. Study of inventory optimization simulation model, the Rippled Newsvendor, to explore the
optimal inventory and production policy through the lens of a risk severity objective
9. A mathematical model for a closed-loop supply chain model studied which was developed by
considering the reworking processes, waste disposal activity, and carbon emission costs, where
the level of demand depends on the quality of the product and the selling price.
10. To support various studies; many mathematical models, simulation models, descriptive statistics,
existing research etc. were extensively used.

Research gap:

Major research gaps as per the reviewed research papers are as follows:

1. In order to establish better relation between supply chain performance & technology, future
research can consider additional variables like risk management strategies as a moderator on the
relationship between SC strategies and overall firm performance.
2. In future work the impact of contextual factors such as business environment, on the link between
IT and SCM competitive advantage can also be explored.
3. For measuring integration in supply chain sustainability, further works can be focused on case
study projects and supply chain modeling in simulation applications and analyzing the results,
with the use of developed evaluation methodology.
4. Future research on blockchain technology in supply chain can include addition of various
empirical evidences for supporting its relevance in near future.
5. Using product serialization method to automate product recall using blockchain can also be
explored.
6. More quantitative research for evaluating new technology (IoT, blockchain etc.) benefits/Return-
on-investment in supply chain.