Bending to supply chain circularity

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the March-April 2020 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

March-April 2020

Are you ready for NextGen technologies? Just the other day, I had the opportunity to tour one of Amazon’s highly automated robotic fulfillment centers. I expected to be dazzled—and I was. But it wasn’t because of the automation. The tour was a reminder that there’s no question that NextGen technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, blockchain, robotics, 3D printing and 5G are going to be the differentiators in tomorrow’s supply chain. The question is: Are you ready?

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The path to sustainable supply chains may be ill-defined, but chances are it’s circular. Companies are coming under increasing pressure to reduce waste by redesigning, recycling or repurposing end-of-life products, processes that are core to circular supply chains. However, embracing circularity across supply chains designed primarily to move product forward in a linear fashion is a massive undertaking that entails changing deeply ingrained practices. How can companies engineer this course change without undermining the performance levels they have worked so hard to achieve in the linear world?

Such a change requires much innovation. In December 2019, some 40 companies from various industries gathered at the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics’ (MIT CTL) Towards Circularity in the Supply Chain Roundtable to discuss the innovative approaches companies need to create closedloop supply chains.

Mapping a circular route

The Ellen Macarthur Foundation defines a circular economy as “a framework for an economy that is restorative and regenerative by design.” The model is based on three principles: design out waste and pollution, keep products and materials in use and regenerate natural systems. Supply chain management is fundamental to achieving the first two principles.

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