Proper Tools Helping Sustainability in Logistics Practice

Proliferation on sustainability is a must, for quite a lot of companies. Logisticians could use models in attaining sustainability, or at least in understanding its potentials. A sustainable business plan must be based on a clear vision and must be underpinned thoroughly, in order to get the board and / or external investors prepared to invest in it. Like any logistics plan, a sustainable plan may require an acceptable Return on investment (ROI), both on an economic and strategic level. In many cases this requires pre-cost calculations. So, pre-calculations of both market costs and external costs and benefits – both in terms of people, profit and planet – in many cases seem to be necessary as a support for initiatives of companies that set up new sustainable supply chains and networks. Under what conditions may models be of help? That is the question we address to in this paper. We will compare two models. One we worked with, and one we are building now. Both of them contain a calculation module which could be helpful to support (medium sized) companies when building up their Supply Chain Networks. Both models may help in looking for new ways of building up a logistics networks, and in looking for alternative modes of transportation. When starting to build a new model, we wondered what we might learn from the business experience with the Digiscan model. This model is already in use for many years, but last years it has had some problems reaching its new target audience: SME’s. By analyzing these problems we hope to overcome any traps when building our European Networks model. The new model will become operational at the end of 2009.