Are We Going in Circles? What's Next in Sustainable Operations?

This IDC Perspective looks at three broad areas of opportunity to operationalize sustainability and then focuses in on reverse logistics, which offers opportunities to find gains in resource efficiency, consumer relationship and insight, and cost efficiency and revenue generation. The regulatory, economic, social, and environmental pressures have increased the priority of making advancements toward circular supply chains. Advancements in technologies such as supply chain orchestration (SCO) dovetail with this need while the area of after-sales and reverse logistics remains an under-leveraged area of opportunity. By investing in holistic supply chain capabilities and connecting product design to reverse logistics, companies can achieve gains to fully operationalizing sustainability.As organizations seek to realize the end-state ideal of the circular supply chain, it's time to stop asking "why are we going in circles?" and ask "how can we get closer to going in circles?""Historically, supply chain management has been a linear exercise moving from location to location, process to process, and silo to silo. In recent years, gains in holistic, integrated thinking and in closed-loop systems have supply chains poised for sustainability gains." - Eric Thompson, research director, Worldwide Supply Chain Planning at IDC