Making the Invisible Visible: The Use of Big Data in Sustainable Supply Chain Management

Today, more than 90% of CEOs consider sustainability important to their organization’s success. Many organizations are actively integrating sustainability principles into their business practices. Supply chains are key here. They hold the biggest opportunities for breakthroughs in sustainability performance. More than 80% of an organization’s greenhouse-gas emissions and more than 90% of its environmental impact can be accounted for by the supply chain. Nevertheless, supply chain practices rank as the biggest challenge to improving sustainability performance. Much of the environmental impact occurs at the raw materials stage in the production process. Here, supply chains can be highly fragmented, and gathering and assessing data at scale is a challenge. Such conditions prevent organizations from knowing its sustainability impacts – especially in segments of their supply chain where the impacts are likely to be the worst.

To understand their environmental impacts, organizations must determine how resources are used at every step of the production process. This involves a lot of complex data and is a challenge in itself. At Google, we took up on this challenge.

Together with WWF Sweden, we are creating an environmental data platform that will enable more responsible sourcing decisions in the fashion industry. Today, this industry accounts for 20% of wastewater and 2-8% of greenhouse gas emissions globally. Here as well, most of the environmental impact occurs at the raw materials stage in the production process. The aim is eventually to “…make supply chain data visible and accessible to decision makers, and drive more responsible and sustainable decisions.”

Google Cloud tools and technologies play a crucial role here. The platform is built on Google Cloud (big) data collection and analysis, and machine learning capabilities. The challenge facing the fashion industry is one of information – taking fragmented and incomplete information and translating it into meaningful actionable insights. This is where Google Cloud’s AI capabilities can unlock insights fast and fill in data gaps. In addition, ML is used to estimate the environmental impact of a particular item throughout the different stages of the production process. Taken together, Google Cloud tools, technologies, and capabilities give brands a more comprehensive view into their supply chain. In doing so, Google Cloud empowers brands to make more responsible decisions in selecting materials and suppliers for their products.

These improved insights in supply chains are not exclusive to the fashion industry. It is all about using data to translate into actionable insights, and this can be done at the level of an individual organization as well. Take Unilever for example: by combining the power of Google’s cloud computing with satellite imagery and AI, it is building a more holistic view of the environment that intersects with its supply chain. This allows Unilever and its suppliers to take action wherever and whenever it is needed.

Simplifying complex datasets is critical to increasing transparency within supply chains. Google Cloud data tools such as Google Cloud Storage, BigQuery and Data Catalog can help. These tools can make sense of large amounts of complex data, and facilitate metadata management and discovery. In addition, Google Cloud’s planetary-scale geo-spatial platform, including Google Earth Engine, provides accurate satellite imagery and geospatial data. Such data is essential to obtain insights into any environmental impact from sourcing. Google Cloud’s ML and AI capabilities and tools can fill in data gaps and unlock insights fast and efficiently.

So, organizations can enhance their sustainability performance significantly by focusing on their supply chains. However, supply chains can be highly fragmented – especially in the raw material stage – and gathering and assessing data at scale is a challenge. Simplifying complex datasets is critical to increasing transparency within supply chains. Google Cloud offers the tools and capabilities needed for such (big) data collection and analysis. This enables organizations to make supply chain data more visible and accessible, and hence drive more responsible and sustainable decisions. Together with Google Cloud, your organization can bring together information in a way that will enable it to find the moonshots for a more sustainable future for your organization.