How digitization of supply chains can boost circular economies
Digital innovation and the circular economy are kind of symbiotic in nature. In times of increasing internet proliferation, it’s hard to imagine any circular economy initiative that isn’t aided through technology. While there can be a number of ways in which digitization can positively impact the circular economy, here are the top three:
1. Digitization can help organizations make better, more sustainable decisions.
Digital technologies enable information to travel alongside the product. This enables businesses to capture, store, and analyze consumption patterns, which in turn helps organizations make better decisions. For example, research shows that 70% of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are related to material handling and use. If businesses have insights into how full their aircraft, ship, or truck is, they can determine in real time how efficient their delivery will be. This translates to better efficiency, lower fuel costs, shorter delivery cycles, and reduced GHG. Thyssenkrupp, one of the world’s leading elevator manufacturers, installed a cloud-based predictive maintenance system on 130,000 of its elevators worldwide. Its sensors collect health data of its components, systems, and performance. This helps Thyssenkrupp provide better service, extended elevator uptimes, and longer product lifespans.
2. Digitization can help unlock greater value across entire supply chains. Traditionally, most businesses are focused on connecting data and devices across their customer base. Digitization can be used to unlock a number of isolated parts, partners, and consumers from across the entire value chain. For instance, a raw material supplier can tap into the stocking system of a manufacturer (via APIs) to proactively validate if they are running out of certain raw materials. Once raw materials have reached end-of-life, manufacturers can leverage digital technologies to gauge whether the products have reached sufficient intrinsic value to be returned to them. This creates an opportunity for businesses to be more efficient, less resource intensive, and create less waste and emissions in the process. An increasing number of digital platforms are promising to create tighter value-chain integrations and assist various manufacturers in transitioning to a circular economy model. On the consumer end, digital marketplaces are helping to create more sustainability-conscious consumers.
3. Digital supply chains need to be reliable and secure. Supply chain digitization offers the promise of greater speed, efficiency, visibility, and control. However, the increased prevalence of APIs means that an organization’s attack surface increases. In the same way that a single container ship trapped in the Suez Canal can interrupt the world economy, an API that is unavailable or untrustworthy can disrupt important supply chain processes. As organizations digitize, they need to take the measures necessary to protect their digital assets.
How Citrix is engaging the circular economy
Citrix technologies empower individuals and businesses to work from anywhere and embrace adaptable work models. These technologies allow organizations to embrace a secure hybrid work model. This also means that organizations using Citrix can dramatically reduce commuting emissions while meeting employee needs for flexibility, given how 27% of U.S. emissions derive from transportation sources and office-related commuting.
Workers using Citrix solutions can use low-energy devices and use those same devices for longer, reducing cost and emissions while keeping hazardous waste out of landfills. This supports two key principles of a circular economy with device reuse and waste reduction.
Citrix technologies also play a vital role in facilitating a seamless move to energy efficiency and lower carbon cloud computing. Citrix’s App Delivery and Security solution protects and scales APIs that are so vital to a streamlined and efficient digital supply chain. Protecting the digital backbone is an important step in moving to a more circular economy.
The shift to the circular economy will not be easy, but it will be rewarding. Customers are looking for businesses that provide great service, but also share their core values. Companies that leverage digitization to embrace circularity will be seen as visionary, and as such will be rewarded with deeper customer relationships and loyalty. As the old saying goes, what goes around, comes around.
This content was produced by Citrix. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff.
Leggett told researchers that she “became one” with her device. It helped her to control the unpredictable, violent seizures she routinely experienced, and allowed her to take charge of her own life. So she was devastated when, two years later, she was told she had to remove the implant because the company that made it had gone bust.
The removal of this implant, and others like it, might represent a breach of human rights, ethicists say in a paper published earlier this month. And the issue will only become more pressing as the brain implant market grows in the coming years and more people receive devices like Leggett’s. Read the full story.
—Jessica Hamzelou
You can read more about what happens to patients when their life-changing brain implants are removed against their wishes in the latest issue of The Checkup, Jessica’s weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things biotech. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.
If you’d like to read more about brain implants, why not check out:
+ Brain waves can tell us how much pain someone is in. The research could open doors for personalized brain therapies to target and treat the worst kinds of chronic pain. Read the full story.
+ An ALS patient set a record for communicating via a brain implant. Brain interfaces could let paralyzed people speak at almost normal speeds. Read the full story.
+ Here’s how personalized brain stimulation could treat depression. Implants that track and optimize our brain activity are on the way. Read the full story.
Burkhart’s device was implanted in his brain around nine years ago, a few years after he was left unable to move his limbs following a diving accident. He volunteered to trial the device, which enabled him to move his hand and fingers. But it had to be removed seven and a half years later.
His particular implant was a small set of 100 electrodes, carefully inserted into a part of the brain that helps control movement. It worked by recording brain activity and sending these recordings to a computer, where they were processed using an algorithm. This was connected to a sleeve of electrodes worn on the arm. The idea was to translate thoughts of movement into electrical signals that would trigger movement.
Burkhart was the first to receive the implant, in 2014; he was 24 years old. Once he had recovered from the surgery, he began a training program to learn how to use it. Three times a week for around a year and a half, he visited a lab where the implant could be connected to a computer via a cable leading out of his head.
“It worked really well,” says Burkhart. “We started off just being able to open and close my hand, but after some time we were able to do individual finger movements.” He was eventually able to combine movements and control his grip strength. He was even able to play Guitar Hero.
“There was a lot that I was able to do, which was exciting,” he says. “But it was also still limited.” Not only was he only able to use the device in the lab, but he could only perform lab-based tasks. “Any of the activities we would do would be simplified,” he says.
For example, he could pour a bottle out, but it was only a bottle of beads, because the researchers didn’t want liquids around the electrical equipment. “It was kind of a bummer it wasn’t changing everything in my life, because I had seen how beneficial it could be,” he says.
At any rate, the device worked so well that the team extended the trial. Burkhart was initially meant to have the implant in place for 12 to 18 months, he says. “But everything was really successful … so we were able to continue on for quite a while after that.” The trial was extended on an annual basis, and Burkhart continued to visit the lab twice a week.
“A patient should not have to undergo forcible explantation of a device,” says Nita Farahany, a legal scholar and ethicist at Duke University in North Carolina, who has written a book about neuro rights.
“If there is evidence that a brain-computer interface could become part of the self of the human being, then it seems that under no condition besides medical necessity should it be allowed for that BCI to be explanted without the consent of the human user,” says Ienca. “If that is constitutive of the person, then you’re basically removing something constitutive of the person against their will.” Ienca likens it to the forced removal of organs, which is forbidden in international law.
Mark Cook, a neurologist who worked on the trial Leggett volunteered for, has sympathy with the company, which he says was “ahead of its time.” “I get a lot of correspondence about this; a lot of people inquiring about how wicked it was,” he says. But Cook feels that outcomes like this are always a possibility in medical trials of drugs and devices. He stresses that it’s important for participants to be fully aware of these possibilities before they take part in such trials.
Ienca and Gilbert, however, think something needs to change. Companies should have insurance that covers the maintenance of devices should volunteers need to keep them beyond the end of a clinical trial, for example. Or perhaps states could intervene and provide the necessary funding.
Burkhart has his own suggestions. “These companies need to have the responsibility of supporting these devices in one way or another,” he says. At minimum, companies should set aside funds that cover ongoing maintenance of the devices and their removal only when the user is ready, he says.
Burkhart also thinks the industry could do with a set of standards that allow components to be used in multiple devices. Take batteries, for example. It would be easier to replace a battery in one device if the same batteries were used by every company in the field, he points out. Farahany agrees. “A potential solution … is making devices interoperable so that it can be serviced by others over time,” she says.
“These kinds of challenges that we’re now observing for the first time will become more and more common in future,” says Ienca. Several big companies, including Blackrock Neurotech and Precision Neuroscience, are making significant investments in brain implant technologies. And a search for “brain-computer interface” on an online clinical trials registry gives more than 150 results. Burkhart believes around 30 to 35 people have received brain-computer interfaces similar to his.
Leggett has expressed an interest in future trials of brain implants, but her recent stroke will probably render her ineligible for other studies, says Gilbert. Since the trial ended, she has been trying various combinations of medicines to help manage her seizures. She still misses her implant.
“To finally switch off my device was the beginning of a mourning period for me,” she told Gilbert. “A loss—a feeling like I’d lost something precious and dear to me that could never be replaced. It was a part of me.”
