Conceptual Model for Information Systems of Sustainable Supply Chain

Management
Majid Aarabi 1, 2*, Muhamad Zameri Mat Saman1, M.R. Khoei 1, Kuan Yew Wong1, Hooshang M.
Beheshti 3, Norhayati Zakuan4
1
Dept. of Manufacturing and Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia,
81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia
2
Department of Industrial Engineering, Shiraz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shiraz, Iran
3
College of Business and Economics, Radford University, Radford, VA 24142, USA
4
Faculty of Management and Human Resource Development, Universiti
Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia

(*e-mail: majidnp@gmail.com)

Abstract – New challenges and opportunities are
encountered in the present supply chain management. In
addition to the competition of the markets in the globe,
limitation of energy, raw and virgin materials,
environmental protection crisis and increase of global
population are causing unprecedented issues to the
worldwide supply chains for obtaining of goods and
services for customers efficiently and effectively.
Conventional supply chain management (SCM) considered
three stages: pre-manufacture, manufacture and use, while
the present enterprises need to consider the sustainable
supply chain management (SSCM) for competitiveness
and stability in the market. SSCM stages are: pre-
manufacture, manufacture, use and post-use. Sustainable
enterprises, also promote three core aspects:
Environmental, Economical and Social. In this paper, it
discusses the 6Rs of sustainable manufacturing in SSCM
with regard to the three core aspects. A conceptual model
is proposed for sustainable supply chain management
information systems and this model is demonstrated in a
case study.
Keywords - Sustainable supply chain, Information systems,
Supply chain management, Social responsibility,
Economical sustainability, Economical sustainability
I. INTRODUCTION
Traditional supply chains have been considered as
operational chains that construct the nodes to produce
products and distribute them to customers. The main
attention of the enterprises was satisfaction of their
customers with regard to the minimum cost [1].
Information in this chain is as important as the products
and can bring the most benefits to SCM and facilitate its
operation [2]. In addition, the value for customers can
be obtained with the integration of the key business
processes among the partners within the supply chain.
SCM links the elements of the industry value chain
together, from suppliers to manufacturers, distributors
and customers respectively to make more efficient
processes and more satisfied customers of the end
products and services [3-5]. This paradigm is being
changed by sustainable supply chain management
(SSCM). SSCM advances the abilities of enterprises in
the global market competition, with regard to natural
resources, society awareness and environmental saving
aspects simultaneously. The commercial improvement
and revenue growth of the companies, their sustainable
manufacturing and their customer satisfaction are
strictly related to the concept of global sustainable
supply chains. The successful development of
sustainable supply chain management information
systems (SSCMIS) is not easy. Some efforts have been
done in designing more efficient information systems
for sustainable supply chain management (SSCM). The
purpose of this paper is to describe a conceptual model
for designing sustainable supply chain management
information system.
The article consists of five sections. Section II
describes the meaning of sustainable supply chain
management (SSCM). This will be followed by the
characteristics of sustainable supply chain management
information systems (SSCMIS) and a conceptual model
for SSCMIS will be described in Section III. Section IV
will be devoted to the use of the conceptual model in a
case study. The manuscript will be ended with
conclusions and suggestions for future research in
Section V.
II. SUSTAINABLE SUPPLY CHAIN
MANAGEMENT (SSCM)

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Stage: Pre-Manufacture Manufacture
Flow of Information 
Flow of material 
Reduce
Redesign
Remanufacture
Recycle Recovered products
Fig.1. SCOR in SSCM with 6Rs Principles [14-17]
The challenges for designing a supply chain
management system can be streamlined by using
advanced information and communication technologies.
These new technologies will provide significant
opportunities in the supply chain management to
facilitate its processes and improvement of its
integration. The necessity of the future supply chains
will be to identify a supply chain strategy that can
provide direction of the whole supply chain for
competition in the global market [6].
Sustainability Definition:
The definition of sustainability is [7-8]:
“development that meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations
to meet their needs.” In fact, sustainability is a very
challenging and wide approach that tries to balance
three important aspects: economic benefits,
environmental protection and social responsibility [9-
10].
The focus on operations and supply chain
management has now moved from local consideration
and optimization factors to consideration of the entire
supply chain during the stages: pre-manufacturing,
manufacturing, use and post-use of products [11]. Also,
for sustainability of a supply chain, the six principles of
sustainability (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recover, Re-
design, and Re-manufacture) should be considered in
different tiers of the supply chain [11]. The brief
definitions of these principles are:
Reduce: the reduction of using materials and energy in
pre-manufacturing and manufacturing stages and also
the reduction of waste during the use stage [11-12].
304
Use Post-Use
Reuse
Recover
Reuse: the reuse of the product or its components to
reduce the usage of new raw materials to produce
products and components [11-12].
Recycle: the process of converting some wasted
materials into new / raw materials [11-12].
Recover: the process of collecting products at the end
of the use stage. It can be the disassembly of the
product into its components, cleaning and sorting of
these components for more utilization in different stages
of lifecycles in a supply chain [11-13].
Redesign: the redesigning of products to simplify future
post-use processes and then the production of more
sustainable products [11-13].
Remanufacture: the re-processing of used product for
restoration to its original properties through its reuse
without the loss of its functionality [11-13].
In this paper, the SCOR model [14-17] is considered as
our reference to follow the modeling and
implementation of SSCMIS. The four aforementioned
stages of SSCM and the 6 Rs principles are included in
the SCOR model to consider the sustainability of supply
chain processes (as shown in Fig. 1). This figure shows
the particular stage(s) that each of the sustainable
manufacturing principles can be related with to when
designing a supply chain management system.
III. SUSTAINABLE SUPPLY CHAIN
MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS
(SSCMIS)
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Integrated 
Environmental Social
Aspects Database 
Aspects

Pre‐Manufacturing  Manufacturing  Using Post‐ Using 

6 Rs Sustainability Principles

Economical aspects

Fig. 2: Proposed conceptual model of SSCMIS

Conventional supply chain management (SCM)
considered only three stages: pre-manufacture,
manufacture and use, without considering the “Post-use”
aspect. Besides this, the SCM information systems
don’t consider the post-use stage and 6Rs in the supply
chains. SSCM information systems should manage the
information needs of all four stages in an integrated
database and it can be accessed online by different
stakeholders in this chain. The sustainability approach
should be considered in all functions of supply chain
and supported by SCOR model.
Information systems for SSCM require a much broader
and holistic approach than ordinary SCMIS that
considers the three stages only: Pre-manufacture,
Manufacture, and Use [18-19] without including the
Post-use stage.
Fig. 2 shows the proposed conceptual model of
SSCMIS that considers the stages of a Sustainable
Supply Chain and its information flow. There is a
common infrastructure and integrated database for the
information in this model. It will provide the integrity
and consistency of information for SSCMIS. By
following this conceptual model of SSCMIS (Fig.2) and
the SCOR model with 6Rs principles (Fig.1) as
references, the attention to all needed principles and
stages of sustainability in SCM for designing and
implementing SCMIS can be guaranteed.

Table I. The sample basic entities of SSCM-IS

Name of Entity Environmental Economical Social

Materials and Inventory Mgt.: Availability, hazardous rate of materials, rate of recycling, spec. 
detail, …
Wastes: Type of recycling or disposal and combustion, Landfill, details of dangerous or 
unwanted substances,…
Fuel / Energy: Availability, spec. detail, … 

Prices: Fuel/energy, materials, …   

Costs: Taxes, transportation and delivery, failures (machine/human)   
Returns: Rejected products/services  
Disposal returns: At the end of life-cycle or because of bad quality   
Human resources: Employee wages, working hours, productivity, experiences, safety of  
employees, …
Production plan: Designing, manufacturing time, manufacturing scheduling, necessary   
material and fuel/energy, …
Delays: For fuel/energy, raw material or produced goods/services, …  

Quality: Product or service quality, customer satisfaction, defect rate, …   

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IV. CAS
SE STUDY off these basicc entities forr sustainable supply chainn
management
m innformation sysstems (SSCMIIS).
The case study presennts the use of o the propossed Following this,
t the data model of thee SSCMIS foor
model of SSCMIS
S in one of the manufacturiing th
he case study was developeed using IDEF F1X as shownn
companies inn Iran. The daata presented in this researrch in
n Fig. 3.
are on the baasis of VAM MCo company (a vehicle part p The functioonal model oof the processses of SCOR R
manufacturing company inn Iran). The objective
o of thhis model
m with reegard to 6 RRs and triple bottom lines
research is to improve the data floow among the t ap
pproach is designed using IDEF0 modeeling languagee
members in a sustainable supply
s chain system. For thhis in
n this case.
purpose, a dattabase is deveeloped in whicch after a certaain
period of revvision and im mprovement, it’s i expected to
yield a decreease in terms of costs andd lead-time and a LUSION AND
V. CONCL D FUTURE RE
ESEARCH
facilitating the data flow f and enhancing the t
sustainability factors in thhe supply chhain. This stuudy Future suppply chains willl be challenged to consideer
aims that thee developmennt of such SS SCMIS softwaare En nvironmental and Sociall aspects in n addition too
will increase the efficienccy of the woork tasks in the t Ecconomical aspect.
a Inforrmation techhnologies cann
business proocess and laayout of the manufacturiing faacilitate the success in thhis complicaated chain byy
company. Thee focus of thiss research is on o modeling of o a immproving thee efficiency in the use of valuablee
sustainable supply chainn managemeent informatiion reesources, maaterial storaage, materiall movementt,
system. One of the basicc necessities for sustainabble manufacturing
m process, prodduct design an
nd recycling of
o
supply chainn implementtation is thee visibility of th
he used goodds. Moreoverr, the effort of the futuree
appropriate innformation inn the exact time t and in the
t suupply chains will be focuused on achieving success
exact arrangeement. In the modeling off the sustainabble th
hrough sustaainable proocess impro ovement andd
supply chain information system,
s the fiirst mission was
w coollaboration ono strategic, tactical, an nd operationaal
to find signifiicant variabless like inputs and
a outputs withw leevels [19] witth regard to aall the four stages
s that aree
regard to thhe triple boottom lines (Environment
( tal, neeeded for a suustainable suppply chain.
Economical and
a Social asppects). Table I shows a sampple

Fig. 3. Thee IDEF1X model of database

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This paper described that when designing SCMs [10] J.D. Linton, R. Klassen, V. Jayaraman,
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ACHKNOWLEDGEMENT Jawahir, “A new methodology for transforming
The authors gratefully acknowledge the IDF financial 3R concept into 6R concept for improved product
support from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). sustainability,” Global Conference on Sustainable
Product Development and Life Cycle Engineering,
SaoPaulo, Brazil, 2006.
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