Supply chains are the foundation of the global economy and significantly shape social and environmental impacts. In our interconnected world, every organization participates in at least one supply chain.
A supply chain’s network is built around decision points, each adding value to final products and services while also impacting sustainability, either positively or negatively. As a result, sustainability emerges as a critical fourth consideration in supply chain management, alongside service levels, costs, and cash flow.
Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) integrates system-level thinking and actions into supply chain operations, addressing financial, environmental, and social performance. Key practices include product and process design, life cycle assessment, material sourcing, manufacturing, waste management, transportation, and end-of-life product handling, including closed-loop systems.
Sustainability is no longer a stand-alone concern; organizations are increasingly adopting comprehensive approaches to address environmental, social, and economic impacts. This shift is driven by advances in scientific understanding, evolving political agendas, and the growing realization that proactive, holistic sustainability efforts can align with profitability. As businesses move beyond traditional bottom-line thinking to embrace the “triple bottom line”—balancing profit, people, and the planet—systemic and integrated solutions for sustainable supply chains have become essential, especially in the face of uncertainty and complexity.
Supply chain management requires balancing competing priorities, such as stock levels, investment in transport infrastructure, and reducing transportation costs. This balancing act has often resulted in reliance on energy-intensive and polluting transportation methods.
Just as climate, the global energy system is vast, complex, and essential to modern life. Access to abundant, cheap and reliable energy has supported growth for billions of people. For all its benefits, however, it is the source of more than 85% of CO2 emissions¹ (Global McKinsey Institute).
The Global McKinsey Institute’s research on energy transition highlights the critical, interdependent elements required for success, including advancements in technology and supply chains, economic adjustments like capital investments, effective governance, and strong commitments.
The study examines the challenges of replacing high-performing fossil-fuel assets with low-emission alternatives and developing the infrastructure to support them, emphasizing the need for a systemic and holistic transformation of the global energy system. In essence, achieving a high-performance, low-emissions energy system requires understanding how the underlying components connect and interact, much like examining the mechanics of an engine to ensure it runs efficiently for societal needs.
Examples of such complexities are: managing power systems with a large share of variable renewables, addressing range and payload challenges in electric trucks, optimizing asset lifecycle in asset intensive industries, and finding alternative heat sources for producing industrial materials.
Prioritizing maintenance activities based on asset criticality and risk, rather than following a fixed schedule, further extends the life of physical assets and minimizes resource waste, ensuring optimal use and energy consumption. Collectively, these strategies support sustainable practices by enhancing resource efficiency and reducing environmental footprint.
As corporations account for approximately two thirds of the world’s electricity end-use consumption, they will likely play a vital role in decarbonizing the global economy by 2050 (Source: 2023 Gartner Antifragile Supply Chain Management Survey).
Future scientific and technological developments will necessarily depend upon coming to grips with complex systems, which means having the capability to consider and manage many different kinds of components interacting simultaneously and nonlinearly with each other and their environments, on multiple levels.
With unprecedented technological development and innovations at hand, sustainability can be maximized for all activities of the supply chain, including service concept, product design, material sourcing and procurement, manufacturing, delivery, and end-of-life product management.
At Cosmo Tech, we identified seven important actionable steps and decision making perspectives for leveraging a new level of understanding and integrating sustainability into economic decision making processes while enhancing the overall performance of complex systems.
We believe that achieving environmental sustainability requires leveraging cutting-edge technologies and forward-thinking strategies.
AI-Simulation technology empowers large, complex enterprises to drive meaningful progress towards net-zero goals while maintaining competitiveness. Here is a non exhaustive list of green capabilities and benefits:
Gain a comprehensive view of system dynamics, interdependencies, and cascading effects to identify actionable insights and key sustainability levers.
Accurately measure carbon emissions across the entire lifecycle of assets, products, and processes, enabling proactive reductions aligned with ESG objectives.
Explore and compare future scenarios—such as sustainable procurement strategies, waste reduction initiatives, and renewable energy integration—to make informed decisions even in the face of uncertainty.
Balance short-term financial goals with long-term environmental and operational objectives through AI-driven optimization, ensuring strategies align with net-zero trajectories.
Identify vulnerabilities across operations such as equipment breakdowns or supply chain disruptions—and mitigate them to minimize economic, social, and environmental impacts.
By combining advanced analytics, dynamic simulations, and optimization techniques, Cosmo Tech delivers actionable strategies that empower organizations to address the complex challenges of climate change. Together, we can make sustainability a core driver of decision-making, ensuring resilience and value creation at every step.
