IoT-enabled carbon footprint monitoring supports supply chain sustainability

To help organizations account for the impact of their logistics processes in the environmental analysis of their supply chains, Zürich-based Arviem AG has developed an innovative, IoTenabled, real-time carbon footprint monitoring service for logistics. By providing in-transit visibility, it enables importers and exporters to develop smarter, more efficient and more responsive supply chain operations.

Sustainability initiatives are gaining momentum as key stakeholders become increasingly interested in monitoring the sustainability of organizations’ business practices. Research shows that supply chains are often responsible for a large share of a company’s overall greenhouse gas emissions, with transport and shipping being two of the major culprits.

Reducing the carbon footprint in the supply chain can not only substantially contribute towards a company’s sustainability initiatives, but also has quantifiable business effects such as lowering operational costs. To find out where logistics-related carbon emissions are concentrated as the basis for developing and implementing reduction plans, organizations need high-quality and reliable metrics. However, measuring the complete carbon footprint across a global supply chain is a challenging, complex, time-consuming and resource-intensive task.

The solution developed by Arviem enables exporters, importers, distributors and manufacturers of goods to understand the environmental impact of their supply chain activities. Unlike other solutions on the market, Arviem’s carbon emissions reporting is calculated based on effective transport data instead of the less accurate planning data. It offers granularity down to each individual shipment.

Basis for decisions

The new cargo tracking and monitoring service is already helping clients such as Nestlé Canada and Douglas Products to gain visibility into the environmental impact of the movement of their goods across the supply chain. Companies can use the tools developed to monitor the carbon footprint in the logistics chain as the basis for making key business decisions, analysing the performance of their carriers and third-party logistics providers and optimizing the utilization of various transport modes across their supply chains.

In addition to providing business intelligence, this solution also saves companies money while reducing the impact of transport on the environment and hence reducing their carbon footprint. “Here at Douglas Products, we strive for the highest standards in stewardship for our products. Knowing where our product is located is a key part of our stewardship practices. The Arviem solution provides just what we are looking for, to help make sure we are able to track our product around the globe,” says Heather Kern, Commercial Leader at Douglas Products.

Arviem’s pay-as-you-use monitoring service enables companies to monitor the carbon footprint of their logistics supply chain from day one, without the burden of introducing new process or investing into equipment or software.