Sustainability in the supply chain

The Luxembourg Centre for Logistics and Supply Chain Management hosted its third annual eXplore conference on 12 March featuring high-profile speakers from industry and academia giving insights into the sustainability of supply chains.

LCL director, Benny Mantin, welcomed 120 participants from 54 organisations and 3 continents! The theme of the conference was “Greening the Supply Chain” and the speakers, panel and guests talked about the topic from a broad range of perspectives from policy making, to academic theory, to real life initiatives and implementation by the business world.

Opening Remarks came from Antonino Barbera Mazzola (Policy Officer from the European Commission (EC)) whom talked about C02 emission standards for heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs) and presented the EC’s packages aimed at reducing HDV’s emissions through a number of incentives and penalties.

Josué Velázquez Martínez (Research Scientist at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics) delivered the academic keynote focusing on sustainable logistics. Through a series of projects on last mile delivery, he has demonstrated significant opportunities for savings through, e.g., green vehicle assignment and incorporation of topography into routing decisions.

Annette Stube (Head of Group Sustainability at Maersk Group) gave the industry keynote. She took us through Maersk’s inspiring journey to embark on their sustainability strategy outlining the company’s effort to reach an ambitious target of 0 emissions by 2050.

Professor Nils Löhndorf from the LCL took us through the Green Energy Supply Chain. He introduced us to the complexity embedded in energy markets and talked about Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) indicating that this might be the right time to consider signing a PPA.

Professor Anne Lange, also from the LCL, presented the topic of Measuring Supply Chain Resilience. As resilient supply chain can support green decisions (e.g., by avoiding rush deliveries), it is instrumental to analyse the supply networks, for instance through the bill of material, and identify weak and important nodes.

The LCL graduate students had the opportunity to showcase their research. Nicole Perez Becker and Melvin Drent, both PhD students, pitched their respective topics of food waste along the supply chain and effective dual sourcing decisions in choosing between polluting (cheap) and environmentally friendly (expensive) supply sources.

During the break, LCL master students presented their applied thesis projects with industry, the best of which won a Cargolux sponsored prize. These students prepare a Master in Logistics and Supply Chain Management. They work on their thesis projects in collaboration with industry partners. Find out more about becoming a partner of the LCL.

The conference concluded with an engaging panel discussion, with representatives from the European Investment Bank, Sumy, Roche, LeasePlan, and the Government of Luxembourg taking part in discussing incentives for greening the supply chain, involving topics of technology, investment, responsibility, measurement, transparency and collaboration.