While the manufacturing and production sectors comprise 16% of global GDP and are key drivers for economies around the world, the complex network of supply chains on which these sectors rely presents enormous economic, social and environmental risks that must be collaboratively addressed. 

For decades, executives organized their supply chains based on two priorities: reliability and efficiency—a dependable supply at the lowest cost. The resultant supply chains of today are stretched, inflexible and dangerously opaque. While these risks factors have existed for years, the world is now feeling the full weight of these risks realized as the COVID-19 pandemic creates a perfect storm alongside rising global trade tensions, disruptive technologies and the increasingly severe effects of climate change. 

Traceability-enabling technologies have the potential to mitigate these risks by enhancing transparency and traceability that can be leveraged to create more efficient, resilient, sustainable and circular supply chains. Without visibility into how materials and goods enter and move across supply chains, it is also nearly impossible for companies to increase their agility and effectively police inputs and outputs to comprehensively improve the sustainability of their supply systems.

Capitalizing on this potential requires accelerated adoption of such technologies, but also new collaborative and neutral platforms, toolkits and communities to enable a culture of transparency and mutual accountability across these global networks, while providing consumers with the information they demand about the products they purchase.

This initiative brings together manufacturers, suppliers, consumers and regulators to jointly establish solutions and provide a supporting ecosystem to increase supply chain visibility and accelerate sustainability and circularity across manufacturing and production sectors.