Sustainable Supply Chain Management through the integration of IoT: Road Transportation

Sammanfattning: Traditional transport companies usually focus on achieving economies of scale in supply chain management. At the same time, the managers of transport companies aiming to achieve sustainability often do not consider the barriers needed to overcome to achieve a sustainable supply chain. However, due to the increasing demand for sustainable products and business methods, sustainable supply chain management increasingly plays a crucial role in changing and diverting the focus on environmental, social and economic impact. Transport companies around the globe are increasingly aiming to reduce carbon emissions and eliminate biodiversity loss. The sustainability issues with transport in supply chain management have been a critical field of research for decades, and with the integration of technology, new ways of achieving sustainability are possible. This thesis analyses a phenomenon using multiple cases to investigate the barriers transport companies face to adopting IoT. Also, it deals with how communication service providers might be able to offer solutions to the barriers presented in this thesis.  A qualitative method has been used to approach the research topic. The findings will represent the ways of achieving a more efficient and sustainable supply chain, particularly in the transport sector. Interviews were conducted with multiple industry experts. The study aims to identify the barriers to adopting IoT, which can create a sustainable supply chain for transport companies. The results emphasise the barriers transport companies have to deal with internally and externally. Internally a company might struggle to strategise an infrastructural investment, train the existing workforce, and collaborate knowledge share among different departments. Externally, transport companies or communication service providers (CSP) will face limited resources, stakeholders' investment in the IoT ecosystem, demand for IoT and sustainable supply chain, privacy issues, compatibility issues and lack of skilled labour.