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Sustainability and the search for solutions that are both efficient and ecologically sound (eco-efficient) have become topics of great interest. However, companies seeking to develop supply chain solutions that are eco-efficient are often hampered by their ability to control the wider supply chain and they may need to draw on external support from logistics service providers (LSPs). This paper aims to explore the innovative strategies undertaken by LSPs in the eco-efficiency arena and the logistics and learning capabilities needed to achieve eco-efficiency in supply chains.

The insights derived from a systematic literature review approach to identify the most relevant articles to be included in the analysis represented the starting point for building the authors empirical investigation, based on case studies with in-depth interviews to investigate the phenomenon under consideration and to explore trends and evolving paradigms.

The systematic literature review enriches the existing literature by drawing on three bodies of knowledge, i.e. logistics service providers, eco-efficiency and logistics innovation, and putting them into a single framework. The findings from the interviews suggest that although LSPs are well placed to implement innovative initiatives for eco-efficiency there is a range of inhibitors that prevent major change programmes.

The research reported in this paper is exploratory and limited in its scope. It is based on in-depth interviews within six companies. However, it does provide a platform from which more detailed research may be conducted.

The managerial implications arising from the research offer a wide range of current practices in sustainability, from which strategic and operative directions to compete can be derived.

There is little existing literature that addresses the innovative strategies undertaken by LSPs in influencing and moving supply chains towards eco-efficiency and hence the present paper is meant to help fill this gap.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant and worldwide influence on healthcare delivery, and it has significantly increased the pace at which digital technology is being used. Blockchain, one of these developing digital technologies, is distinguished by a number of properties. This study focuses on a blockchain-enabled healthcare supply chain. The purpose of this work is to investigate how blockchain technology (BCT) benefits the performance of healthcare supply chain management (HSCM).

The present study is based on the empirical research. Blockchain Technology (BCT), Healthcare Sustainable Supply Chain Practices (HSSCP), Healthcare Supply Chain Performance (HSCP) and Stakeholders’ Involvement (SI) practices are identified from the literature review and hypotheses are framed to check their interrelationship. For testing of hypothesis, a questionnaire was developed. Data collection was done by healthcare professionals via Google docs. The IBM SPSS version 22.0 was used to analyze the data and IBM SPSS AMOS 22.0 software was used for the development of structural modal. The data was collected through the Google form from the stakeholders of healthcare sector and analyzed through Structural Equation Modelling.

This research is focused on adoption of BCT enabled Healthcare Sustainable Supply Chain to improve HSCP. From the result, it had been found that BCT is positively effecting the stakeholder's involvement (SI) and HSSCP practices. Cumulatively, they positively impact the performance of HSCP. From this study, it is found that adoption of BCT enabled Healthcare Sustainable Supply Chain succours to combat COVID-19 situation.

This study attempts to show the potential benefits of the adoption of BCT enabled HSSCP to improve HSCP.

Idea of circular economy defies the classical “make-use-dispose” approach of linear economic model. In the context of health-care industry, it relies heavily on the supply chain practices implemented by industry stakeholders. The purpose of this study is to explore such relationships, study their structure and put it across for attaining sustainability at large.

This study is an empirical research conducted on 145 health-care firms. The collected data is analysed to develop structural and measurement model. The five constructed hypotheses are examined and tested through structural equation modelling.

The study illustrates the latent relationships that exist among the stakeholders involvement, sustainable supply chain practices, sustainable performance and circular economy for health-care industry. It is found that the adoption of sustainable supply chain practices improves health-care performance, which, in turn, have positive influence on circular economy.

The structural and measurement model is developed in the context of circular health-care economy. It can be validated or improvised by conducting similar research in other industry using different methods. This research work fulfils the long existing gap in research by offering a linkage between various constructs to achieve health-care circular economy. Based on the research results, future researchers can build theories of circular economy and sustainability for health-care industry.

The study attempts to study the supply chain ways to achieve circular economy for Indian health-care sector. It considered latent relationships among the set of constructs, which are needed for theory building at later stage.

This paper aims to present a smart, sustainable supply chain practices structure on the basis of the relational view.

A method based on fuzzy cognitive map was applied to construct a relational map to introduce and implement such relational methods. Considering this relational map as a guideline, observations into particular methods and ways of applying relational methods to attain sustainable development goals across organizations has been introduced.

Primary outcomes provided a series of relational methods for the purpose of giving advice to those organizations and their suppliers for smart, sustainable supply chain. Reliance between relational methods were examined and assessed under seven meaningful groups: economic internet of things (IoT), green internet of things, social internet of things, economic supply chain, green supply chain, social supply chain and other variables.

This study guides managers toward an improved perception of the connection among IoT instances and sustainable supply to modeling smart, sustainable supply chain. Managers can determine the practices that need more focus along with the practices that are less relevant. Thus, this will help managers in the decision-making process and to organize their decisions by planning and calculating the relative importance and influence of smart, sustainable practices on each other and on the company’s smart, sustainable program.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first approach that promptly examines and determines the interdependencies between relational methods and constructs a relational map for the purpose to introduce and analyze smart, sustainable supply chain.

The already-strained vaccine supply chain (VSC) of the expanded program for immunization (EPI) require a more robust and structured distribution network for pandemic/outbreak vaccination due to huge volume demand and time constraint. In this paper, a lean-agile-green (LAG) practices approach is proposed to improve the operational, economic and environmental efficiency of the VSC.

A fuzzy decision framework of importance performance analysis (IPA)–analytical hierarchy process (AHP)–technique for order for preference by similarity in ideal solution (TOPSIS) has been presented in this paper to prioritize the LAG practices on the basis of the influence on performance indicators. Sensitivity analysis is carried out to check the robustness of the presented model.

The derived result indicates that sustainable packaging, coordination among supply chain stakeholders and cold chain technology improvement are among the top practices affecting most of the performance parameters of VSC. The sensitivity analysis reveals that the priority of practices is highly dependent on the weightage of performance indicators.

This study's finding will help policymakers reframe strategies for sustainable VSC (SVSC) by including new management practices that can handle regular immunization programs as well as emergency mass vaccination.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that proposes the LAG framework for SVSC. The IPA–Fuzzy AHP (FAHP)–Fuzyy TOPSIS (FTOPSIS) is also a novel combination in decision-making.

Today, proficient practices are required to stimulate along various boundaries of the supply chain (SC) to exploit manufacturing resources economically, effectually and gracefully for retaining operational excellence. Accordingly, varieties of paramount practices, i.e. Lean, Agile, Resilient and Green practices, are integrated in present study with the objective to develop a Decision Support Framework (DSF) to select robust supplier under the extent of Lean-Agile-Resilient-Green (LARG) practices for a manufacturing firm. The framework is developed and validated in the Indian automotive sector, where the primary data is collected based on perceptions of the respondents working in an automotive company.

LARG metrics can ponder ecological balance, customer satisfaction, associations, effectiveness and sustainability and thus, the study consolidated LARG practices in one umbrella to develop a DSF. The analytical approach under DSF is developed by the integration AHP, DEMATEL, ANP, Extended MOORA and SAW techniques in present study to evaluate a robust supplier under the aegis of LARG practices in SC. DSF is developed by scrutinizing and categorizing LARG characteristics, where the selected LARG characteristics are handled by fuzzy sets theory to deal with the impreciseness and uncertainty in decision making.

The study has identified 63 measures (15 for Lean, 15 for Agile, 14 for resilient and 19 for Green) to support the robust supplier selection process for manufacturing firms. The findings of study explicate “Internal communication agility”, “Interchangeability to personnel resources”, “Manufacturing flexibility”, “degree of online solution”, “Quickness to resource up-gradation”, “Manageability to demand and supply change”, “Overstocking inventory practices” as significant metrics in ranking order. Additionally, “Transparency to share information”, “Internal communication agility”, “Manufacturing Flexibility”, “Green product (outgoing)” are found as influential metrics under LARG practices respectively.

A technical DSF to utilize by the managers is developed, which is connected with knowledge-based theory and a case of an automobile manufacturing firm is presented to illustrate its implementation. The companies can utilize presented DSF to impose service excellence, societal performance, agility and green surroundings in SC for achieving sustainable outcomes to be welcomed by the legislations, society and rivals. The framework represents an important decision support tool to enable managers to overcome imprecise SC information sources.

The study presented a proficient platform to review the most significant LARG alternative in the SC. The study suggested a cluster of LARG metrics to support operational improvement in manufacturing firms for shifting gear toward sustainable SC practices. The present study embraces its existence in enrolling a high extent of collaboration amongst clients, project teams and LARG practices to virtually eradicate the likelihood of absolute project failure.

This paper aims to evaluate different logistics configuration to deliver batteries from the supplier to the production lines of a European carmaker who is implementing new propulsions for its models.

Several scenarios about the supply chain for traction batteries have been identified based on the company’s requirements and constraints. Then, the variables used for the assessment of each scenario have been selected to calculate the unit battery supply chain cost.

The results underline that a direct transport without intermediate nodes is the cheapest one. On the contrary, an additional warehouse makes the organization of the network more complex. However, with this configuration, it is possible to cover the risk of supply since that a certain level of inventory is always guaranteed.

This study is limited to the analysis of only one model car, and just manual operations have been taken into account for computing the human resource time and cost. The present study is one of the first works exploring the organization of the supply chain for the batteries integrated in electric and hybrid vehicles together with the choice of the location of the related warehouses.

This paper is one of the first work on the assessment of batteries’ supply chain that are going to be integrated in low impact vehicles, focusing on location of the associated warehouse. The evaluation is carried out by taking into account all the sources of cost.

This study aims to investigate the hierarchical relationship between industry-specific attributes of supply chain (SC) strategies and information technology (IT) to improve the performance of firms in textile industry in Pakistan.

This study presents a mix of enablers through literature review and experts’ opinions. Next, the driving and dependence powers of enablers were identified, using the interpretive structural modeling (ISM) approach.

The ISM model suggests eight levels, with customer satisfaction at the top of the model. Process automation and TQM are placed at second and third level, respectively, whereas flexible sourcing and flexible capacity are positioned at fourth level. The key enablers of IT have high driving power, hence positioned at the bottom of ISM model.

This study has value for firms in garment manufacturing and exporting industry to invest into IT and sustainable SC design for competitive performance. The theoretical and managerial implications are provided.

Because of the emergence of technological development, firms (i.e. small and medium enterprises (SMEs)) adopt innovative cost-reduction strategies to improve their processes. Therefore, the adoption of green supply chain practices (GSCP) is critical for SMEs to enhance their business process performance (BPP). This paper aims to investigate how GSCP directly and indirectly (via BPP) influences firm manufacturing performance using the resource-based view as a theoretical base. This research also pursues to examine the mediation mechanism of BPP in the linkage between GSCP and SMEs performance in manufacturing SMEs.

Using the survey method, the authors recruited 407 textile SMEs executives and validated the proposed model and relationships in AMOS.

The outcomes confirm that GSCPs are positively related to BPP and SME performance, and BPP significantly mediates the association between GSCP and SME performance.

The outcomes help SME executives to minimize operational costs, save time and reduce wastage by implementing GSCP in their manufacturing processes. SME executives can improve their internal business processes for attaining the best firm performance.

This research provides a healthy workplace to employees by improving business processes performance, enhancing brand image, increasing employee morale and decreasing production wastage.

This research theoretically and empirically contributes to explore the impact of GSCP on textile SME performance, which was unexplored in strategic green supply chain and performance management literature. Furthermore, this is the first study that explores the mediation mechanism of BPP between GSCP and SMEs performance.

Sustainability is an area of increasing interest for industry and its stakeholders, and some companies now aspire to address sustainability issues (e.g. carbon emissions) at strategic and operational levels. As companies are exploring the issues, they attempt to embed sustainability in their planning and management systems. It is at this point that the domains of environmental concern and performance management meet. The research questions explored in this paper are: what is the size of environmental performance variation? What are the challenges for sustainability performance management in practice?

First, interviews in manufacturing companies were conducted to understand the size of environmental performance variation. Subsequently, a survey, interviews and a workshop were conducted with ten organisations to gain insight in environmental performance management in companies.

It was observed that, across three sectors, environmental performance between manufacturing plants differed up to 500 per cent between worst and best performing factories which make similar products using similar technology, all in well-run companies which have environmental management programmes in place. This means that learning within the company between different sites is important but can be difficult. Some initial success stories observed include a quid-pro-quo approach between factory sites (teach-learn-do-teach) and dedicated individuals (champions) in factories who strive to make year-on-year efficiency improvements.

The paper gives insights in the size of environmental performance variation, self-reported by internal company specialists in sustainable manufacturing, and sustainability performance management in practice.