Extending total life-cycle thinking to sustainable supply chain design

Abstract

Conventional supply chain management (SCM) practices have focused only on three life-cycle stages: pre-manufacturing, manufacturing and use. The fourth stage, post-use, probably the most important from a sustainability perspective, is often addressed on a piece-meal basis, only when such practices deliver economic benefits. This paper introduces a total life-cycle-based approach to sustainable SCM (SSCM) that extends beyond the 3R's of reduce, reuse and recycle to 6R's that includes recover, redesign and remanufacture. A new definition for SSCM that adopts the total life-cycle approach and triple bottom-line (TBL) is presented. Two existing supply chain frameworks: supply chain operations reference (SCOR) model and the global supply chain forum (GSCF) framework, are evaluated in the context of SSCM to improve economic growth while ensuring environmental protection and societal well-being. The review finds that neither framework explicitly captures the non-economic aspects of SSCM, but the broader view of the GSCF framework offers much promise.