Current & Emerging Trends to Achieve Sustainable Supply Trends

Dear Colleagues,

We are at a unique juncture in time of new and emerging policies, strategies, and technologies to advance the sustainability and transparency of global supply chains. A new generation of policies are rapidly being enacted, requiring companies throughout the value chain to increase the transparency and traceability of supply chains in regard to greenhouse gas reporting, human rights, forced labor, biodiversity, chemical safety, and critical minerals, as well as financial disclosures. In some cases, such as the European Union, there are requirements to be transparent and communicate the information through their “Digital Passport” regulations.

In the United States, polices to track and trace supply chains are strictly enforced by Customs and Border Protection, which has impounded supply chain shipments of over USD 3.66 billion due to the suspicion that the goods originated from areas with forced labor.

While some smaller companies may be directly excluded from regulatory requirements and reporting, they will be required by their institutional customers, such as retailers, brands, government buyers, and manufactures, to report, through the supply chain, the required information that these large enterprises are required to report. The pace of these new regulations at the state, national, and international level are developing rapidly, and firms must put in place the systems, strategies, and investments to meet these new requirements for business.

Additionally, the emergence of AI and blockchain, as well as models and software packages to enhance the sustainability of supply chains, are showing to be critical tools. There are also numerous industry collaboratives that are beginning the work in a precompetitive environment to develop cost-effective solutions and practices. This Special Issue seeks articles that cover aspects of these emerging trends and explore their implications for sustainable supply chains in various sectors.

This Special Issue will present new and emerging research on how multi-national organizations are implementing the strategies, systems, and investments within their supply chains and logistics to meet the rapidly emerging requirements of traceability and transparency.

We seek to develop understandings of supply chain engagement practices, pre-competitive collaborations, development of the utility of AI and blockchain, and insights garnered from case examples.

Prof. Dr. Jay Golden
Prof. Dr. Robert Handfield
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Logistics is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• traceability
• transparency
• AI
• blockchain
• greenhouse gases
• forced labor
• circular economy
• biodiversity