According to Alexis Bateman, research scientist and director of MIT Sustainable Supply Chains at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, there are two elements to supply chain transparency:
Visibility: Accurately identifying and collecting data from all links in your supply chain.
Disclosure: Communicating that information, both internally and externally, at the level of detail required or desired.
What kind of data and in how much detail? That can depend on the business you’re in. And how much disclosure? That can depend on your corporate culture and corporate values. Beyond what’s strictly required by regulation, then, supply chain transparency means different things to different companies.
“It’s unrealistic to expect that supply chain players can collect all information all the time,” said Bateman. One grocery store chain that specializes in organic and sustainable food may go to lengths to identify, and disclose, great detail in its supply chain. Another chain, one that focuses on the lowest prices, may not want or need as much detail or disclosure. Then again, if bad news strikes — like E. coli being found in lettuce — both chains had better be able to pinpoint their supply sources well enough to be able to pull the contaminated produce.
Digital Transformation Is Changing Supply Chain Relationships https://hbr.org/2022/07/digital-transformation-is-changing-supply-chain-relationships
One supply chain process that requires such interactions is collaborative forecasting informed by machine-learning-based algorithms, which use real-time information on buying patterns to identify new parameters that affect demand. To fully exploit these insights, companies need deeper interactions with upstream suppliers and customers downstream.
How MIT Visualizes Supply Chain Risk https://sourcemap.com/news/2015/9/15/how-mit-visualizes-supply-chain-risk
Bruce Arntzen of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics describes how he uses Sourcemap to create automatic visualizations of complex supply chains to help manufacturers avoid and plan for risk in the end-to-end supply chain. Video, 2015.
State of Supply Chain sustainability 2021 MIT report https://sscs.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/State-Sustainable-Supply-Chains-MIT-CSCMP.pdf
This year's report sheds light on how companies put their SCS promises into practice. Of the many ways to accomplish this, three common approaches emerged, including supplier development, supply chain visibility, and environmental impact reduction. Supplier development was the most common across all industries; however, visibility proved equally attractive in manufacturing and transportation.
As the supply chain sustainability field advances, so does this report, and this year we introduce a classification of companies based on behaviors related to SCS. The model, called the SCS Firm Typology, yields fresh insights into the state of sustainability in supply chains. Categories of firms range from low? effort enterprises with little engagement in SCS to highly committed leaders. This typology distills the report's analyses into an interpretable model and enables future exploration of the evolution of SCS across multiple dimensions.
Book: Certifying China https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5271/Certifying-ChinaThe-Rise-and-Limits-of
A comprehensive study of the growth, potential, and limits of transnational eco-certification in China and the implications for other emerging economies. China has long prioritized economic growth over environmental protection. But in recent years, the country has become a global leader in the fight to save the planet by promoting clean energy, cutting air and water pollution, and developing a system of green finance. In Certifying China, Yixian Sun explores the potential and limits of transnational eco-certification in moving the world's most populous country toward sustainable consumption and production. He identifies the forces that drive companies from three sectors—seafood, palm oil, and tea—to embrace eco-certification. The success of eco-certification, he says, will depend on the extent to which it wins the support of domestic actors in fast-growing emerging economies.