Editorial: Journey to sustainable supply chains: insights from the 26th ISL

The International Journal of Logistics Management

ISSN: 0957-4093

Article publication date: 7 August 2024

Issue publication date: 7 August 2024

238

Citation

O'Reilly, S., Kalverkamp, M. and Rogers, H. (2024), "Editorial: Journey to sustainable supply chains: insights from the 26th ISL", The International Journal of Logistics Management, Vol. 35 No. 5, pp. 1369-1372. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-09-2024-608

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2024, Emerald Publishing Limited


Supply chain sustainability has attracted increasing attention from academics, the business community and policymakers over the recent years. It is increasingly recognised that systems thinking and co-design methodologies, involving a range of stakeholders, have a key role to play in designing a more sustainable supply chain (Fritz, 2022). Building on a long tradition, bridging research and practice, the 26th International Symposium on Logistics (ISL) provided a forum for academics, researchers and practitioners to discuss and debate the journey to sustainable supply chains. In doing so, papers addressed a range of topics, including sustainability in logistics, resilience, digitalisation, supply chain analytics, customer-supplier relationships, stakeholder management and logistics network design and management. Over the course of the symposium, 68 research papers were presented. Building on experience of a virtual ISL in 2021, the ISL 2022 offered a hybrid environment, with about 40% of the papers presented virtually. This facilitated access and continued the international character of the ISL community with participation from 26 countries across Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and North America. The environment created resulted in interactive sessions, the exchange of perspectives and knowledge generation.

A rigorous peer review process was followed by the ISL special issue editorial panel, based on a combination of their reading of the conference papers, attending presentations and assessment of feedback from session chairs. An initial desk review was then undertaken by the guest editors, after which 14 authors were invited to submit papers. Following the peer-review process prescribed by the International Journal of Logistics Management, and in line with its editorial policy, we have the final cluster of five papers accepted and presented in this special issue. These papers address key supply chain sustainability areas of circular supply chains, urban logistics, cold chain efficiency and related topics of resilience and business improvement.

The need to transition from a linear, take-make-waste to a circular economy has gained momentum in recent years (Suchek et al., 2021; Hazen et al., 2021). In this respect, the clothing supply chain has drawn attention, not least due to various incidents such as the Rana Plaza fire of 2013, but also due to the involvement of a range of for-profit and not-for-profit/third sector stakeholders. In the first paper, Pal and Sandberg explore the antecedents of uncaptured value in circular supply chains of post-consumer used clothing. In doing so, they draw on a multidimensional conceptualisation of value that extends beyond economic value and recognise environmental and social benefits. This extended value perspective highlights the prevalence of uncaptured value in the environmental and social dimensions. To address this, their work adopts a multi-stakeholder approach and employs a value mapping tool that identifies uncaptured value and value opportunities. Furthermore, they consider strategies that can be employed to generate opportunities to capture value. This study illustrates the value of a multi-stakeholder method that explicitly addresses nuanced views of different types of value generated. The stakeholder analysis highlights that an actor may be both a “source” and/or a “target” of the value generated. Furthermore, from an ecosystem perspective, the authors illustrate the “coopetition” effect between different stakeholder groups, e.g. competing to secure supply of high-quality items via collection channels and, due to the complementarity of resources and availability of skills, collaboration in other activities, such as sorting.

Increasing urbanisation has fore fronted the importance of urban logistics as communities seek sustainable solutions to urban congestion and the promotion of liveable spaces. The second paper by Hauge and Jeong addresses sustainable urban mobility planning and seeks to inform urban logistics practices through the provision of a simulation tool that can be adapted to a wide range of urban scenarios. They find that most simulation tools require a level of programming skills and technical expertise that field practitioners and urban planners would not have. A review of the literature informs the selection of the tool (Simulation of Urban Mobility – SUMO) that can be adapted or “simplified” to provide accessibility and usability for practitioners in the field. They adopt a two-stage action research approach, leveraging participatory methods to support the development of this simulation tool. Integrating practical and theoretical knowledge, the approach adopted highlights the value of experimentation and the fundamental importance of iterative development based on user feedback in participatory research.

Cold supply chains, which are critical to food and pharmaceutical supply and security, present specific supply chain sustainability challenges due to energy use and product safety prerequisites. It is widely recognised that global food losses, accounting for up to a third of production by weight, are a major contributor to greenhouse gases (FAO, 2019; UNECE, 2020). In the third paper, Benaglia et al. investigate how to optimise storage location assignment to decrease the picking time and waiting time of orders in a low-temperature food logistics centre. Given that low-temperature warehouses are a known cause of food losses, studies such as this have the potential to inform more sustainable design and practices. This research, based on a case study and simulated data, incorporates item association rules with optimal location storage assignment. Hence, load sizes and frequency of ordering are considered. The authors assess the effectiveness of the eight proposed strategies, with the effect of “Dispersion” emerging as a key finding.

As businesses endeavour to transition to more sustainable systems in the context of the “climate crisis”, the prospect of on-going disruptions related to climate and other factors, such as geoeconomics, looms large. Hence, notwithstanding this need to transition, the pathway to this requires a resilience capability to mitigate supply-chain risks most effectively (Cohen et al., 2022). In the fourth paper, Maharjan and Kato find that the justification of resource commitment to building supply chain resilience requires further attention. Their survey identifies the supply chain resilience strategies in use before and during the COVID-19 pandemic by Japanese companies across four manufacturing industries. Assessing the prevalence of 11 different supply chain resilience strategies, they identify rerouting, business continuity planning (BCP) and facility fortification as the three most important strategies before the pandemic, and inventory prepositioning, rerouting and backup supplier during the pandemic. Analysis of the direct impact of implementation strategies across a range of performance metrics finds a positive impact on net sales for companies implementing these strategies compared to those that did not. However, there was no significant difference for other metrics, including supply chain metrics. This draws attention to issues in terms of measurement and awareness. Analysis of data on indirect impact reveals that those companies with strategies were more negatively impacted by the pandemic in terms of ease of transport from suppliers and customer satisfaction compared to those without strategies. The authors suggest that the observations may stem from the vulnerability of companies to disruption prompting the implementation of resilient strategies and from their adeptness at measuring performance, resulting in a more accurate understanding of the impacts. This underscores the significance of metrics in gauging resilience strategies. Hence, the paper raises an interesting question about company efficacy and related awareness of the business case for investment in resilience strategies.

The emergence of the lean supply chain (LSC) concept (Núñez-Merino et al., 2020), which incorporates lean manufacturing and supply chain management, prompts McDermot et al., in the fifth paper, to explore how Industry 4.0 (I4.0) adds an enabling element to deliver a LSC 4.0 trilogy. They conduct a systematic literature review to establish the current state of thinking and, importantly, explore the motivation for integration of LSC and I4.0. The findings point to the role of I4.0 in business process improvement, which points to synergistic relationships with a lean management philosophy. In addition, the relationship between digitalisation and lean, agile, resilient and flexible principles is highlighted. Related benefits include waste reduction and value delivery. Interestingly, time emerges as a key lever for improvement and value-add, e.g. lead-time improvement, real-time data sharing and real-time tracking and monitoring.

Individually and as a cluster, these papers suggest paths for future research. Pal and Sandberg’s work highlights the often incommensurable nature of value from various stakeholders’ perspectives. Hence, the application of multi-criteria decision-making theory may offer a useful approach to address this and identify optimum strategies to capture value. Their findings indicate that the social dimension of value presents the greatest challenges and value loss. This resonates with increasing attention on the “social” element of the environment, social and governance (ESG) framework. A challenge that was highlighted during the 26th ISL. Rajali and Kato’s findings prompt both epistemological considerations and practical outcomes. In relation to the latter, the prevalence of rerouting as a resilience strategy suggests that analytical solutions based on network and scenario analysis could offer some potential for building future resilience capability. The focus McDermot et al. bring to the integration of I4.0 with LSC points to the imperative of process improvement prior to digitalisation lest business compound issues inherent in current processes.

As a cluster, these papers highlight the imperative for a diverse array of methodological approaches to addressing the complex challenges of sustainability. Embracing varied research methods, such as a case study with simulated data (Benaglia et al.), survey (Maharjan and Kato), qualitative approaches and analysis (Pal and Sanberg; Hauge and Jeong) and systematic literature review (McDermot et al.), collectively contribute to and enrich our understanding of the sustainability dilemma and facilitates the transitions toward more sustainable supply chains. Notable contributions include Pal and Sandberg’s stakeholder approach, which facilitates a nuanced appreciation and, Yongkuk and Hauge’s iterative action research, illustrating the benefits of participative research techniques. The mix of these distinct methodologies not only advances our understanding but also advocates for the (transformative) potential of transdisciplinary approaches and co-design methodologies. In doing so, this collection of papers contributes valuable insights to the landscape of supply chain management, offering new perspectives that further our collective efforts in responding to the “climate crisis” and transitioning to more sustainable supply chains.

References

Cohen, M., Cui, S., Doetsch, S., Ernst, R., Huchzermeier, A., Kouvelis, P., Lee, H., Matsuo, H. and Tsay, A.A. (2022), “Bespoke supply-chain resilience: the gap between theory and practice”, Journal of Operations Management, Vol. 68 No. 5, pp. 515-531, doi: 10.1002/joom.1184.

FAO (2019), The State of Food and Agriculture 2019. Moving Forward on Food Loss and Waste Reduction, Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO, Rome.

Fritz, M. (2022), “A supply chain view of sustainability management”, Cleaner Production Letters, Vol. 3, 100023, doi: 10.1016/j.clpl.2022.100023.

Hazen, B.T., Russo, I., Confente, I. and Pellathy, D. (2021), “Supply chain management for circular economy: conceptual framework and research agenda”, The International Journal of Logistics Management, Vol. 32 No. 2, pp. 510-537, doi: 10.1108/IJLM-12-2019-0332.

Núñez-Merino, M., Maqueira-Marín, J.M., Moyano-Fuentes, J. and Martínez-Jurado, P.J. (2020), “Information and digital technologies of Industry 4.0 and Lean supply chain management: a systematic literature review”, International Journal of Production Research, Vol. 58 No. 16, pp. 5034-5061, doi: 10.1080/00207543.2020.1743896.

Suchek, N., Fernandes, C.I., Kraus, S., Filser, M. and Sjögrén, H. (2021), “Innovation and the circular economy: a systematic literature review”, Business Strategy and the Environment, Vol. 30 No. 8, pp. 3686-3702, doi: 10.1002/bse.2834.

UNECE United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (2020), Simply Measuring - Quantifying Food Loss & Waste: UNECE Food Loss and Waste Measuring Methodology for Fresh Produce Supply Chains, UN, Geneva, eISBN, 978-92-1-004880-4.

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