MIT Sloan Management Review

The Four-Point Supply Chain Checklist:
How Sustainability Creates
New Opportunity

Supply chain managers are uniquely positioned to consider — and benefit from — sustainability initiatives. Edgar Blanco of the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics says there are four key opportunities. INTERVIEW BY MICHAEL S. HOPKINS

HERE’S ONE MORE REASON supply chains are so interesting: Every supply chain is a ready-built collection of modern day innovation levers. All those diverse inputs, all that cross-boundary creative collaboration, all that access to multilevel sources of on-the-ground information can, if attention is paid, answer questions you didn’t even know you had. Managed correctly, a supply chain can be an organization’s neural network. It can surprise you. It can help make a company new.

Edgar Blanco knows that.

Which is why he’s a little disappointed right now.

Blanco is research director at the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics and an expert in the design of environmentally efficient supply chains and innovations in emerging markets. His work provides him a window onto the opportunities that supply chain management can offer to

THE LEADING QUESTION

Where do supply chain goals and sustainability goals profitably meet?

FINDINGS

Packaging redesign
can reduce costs
and environmental
impact.
Transportation
programs can be
tweaked to greatly
reduce carbon
footprints.
Suppliers can do
sustainability
assessments that
uncover shared
opportunities.
Sustainability
decisions can be
communicated to
enhance reputation
and align compa-
nies and consumers.