February 23, 2022
29 min Listen
Two sustainability experts sit down to explore how to build a more sustainable supply chain.
In this episode of Masters of Digital Transformation, Tony hosts Chris Tyas OBE, former Senior VP of Supply Chain at Nestle, SA, and acting Food Supply Director for DEFRA, and Stanton Thomas, Senior VP of Sustainability Solutions at o9 Solutions. Both Chris and Stanton have championed sustainability throughout their respective careers and share their perspectives on issues like traceability, transparency, and how supply chain planning plays a significant role in building sustainable supply chains.
Key Takeaways
Accountability is Imperative
Today’s consumers expect transparency in how products are produced or grown and aren’t afraid to call out greenwashing when they see it. Corporations that embrace transparency not only within their own organization but throughout each node of their supply chain will be able to show exactly how their products are produced and create a stronger sense of accountability among each tier of suppliers and work towards building a truly sustainable supply chain.
Mapping the Supply Chain
AI technology is creating opportunities for companies to gain more visibility into their end-to-end supply chain. For example, AI web crawlers can aggregate data to identify risk factors within a business’s supply chain infrastructure. However, mapping out a supply chain is an intensive process that requires major investment and doesn’t easily link to data upstream and downstream to trading partners. To ensure a stronger ROI on supply chain mapping, businesses will have to act collectively at the sector level and leverage a data repository to ensure supplier data is accessible across the end-to-end supply chain.
The Digital Twin’s Role in Sustainability
Digital twin technology will become a fundamental aspect of building a sustainable supply chain. When an organization incorporates a digital twin into its business and supply chain planning strategies, the digital twin can incorporate ESG data that will help inform how an organization can achieve initiatives like reaching NetZero or reduce/eliminate environmental risk factors within a supply chain.
About the authors
o9
The Digital Brain Platform
o9 Solutions is a leading Enterprise Knowledge and AI-powered platform helping companies build Agile, Adaptive & Autonomous Planning & Execution Models for transforming enterprise decision-making in environments of rising volatility and uncertainty. Whether it is improving forecast accuracy, matching demand and supply and driving collaboration across the multi-tier supply chain to improve resilience at optimal costs and inventory, or optimizing new product and commercial initiatives to drive revenue growth and margins, decision-making processes from long-range to tactical to execution horizon can be made faster and smarter and connected on o9’s Digital Brain Platform.
o9 brings together game-changing technology innovations — such as innovative enterprise knowledge graph modeling, big data analytics, advanced algorithms for forecasting, demand/supply balancing, scenario planning, real time learning, collaboration, generative and agentic AI, easy-to-use interfaces and cloud-based delivery, and innovative management methods — as well as organization, process and change management best practices to transform decision-making speed and intelligence.
