Understanding greening supply chains: Proximity analysis can help

Abstract

Supply chain management seeks efficiency. Inefficiencies cause various types of waste and commensurate costs. Supply chain actors differ resulting in proximity issues. Proximity is introduced here as distances on four dimensions; organizational, geographical, cognitive and technological proximity. Industry 4.0 concepts can improve or even worsen each of the introduced proximity dimensions their influence on green supply chains. We propose a need for investigation at the nexus of Industry 4.0 and greening supply chains; proximity analysis provides a vehicle for this investigation.