Measuring sustainability in manufacturing value chain

Sustainability is a key driver and challenge for the manufacturing industry in the 21st century. Manufacturing companies face increasing demands and expectations from various stakehold-ers, such as customers, investors, regulators and society, to improve their sustainability per-formance and contribute to the global sustainable development goals. Sustainability encom-passes the environmental, social and economic dimensions of the impacts and benefits of manufacturing activities, products and services.
Sustainability management requires a holistic and systemic approach that con-siders the entire value chain, from raw material sourcing to end-of-life man-agement, and interactions among the actors and stakeholders involved.
To effectively manage and improve sustainability, manufacturing companies need to measure and monitor their sustainability performance and value. These functions require the identifica-tion, collection and analysis of relevant data and information on sustainability impacts and bene-fits, as well as the use of appropriate indicators and metrics to communicate and report them. However, measuring and reporting sustainability are not straightforward tasks. Many challenges and gaps hinder the availability, reliability, comparability and usability of sustainability data and indicators. Examples include the lack of clear and consistent sustainability definitions and frameworks, standardised and comparable indicators and metrics of sustainability performance and value, and adequate methods for measuring sustainability. Additionally, there are difficulties in integrating and aligning sustainability goals and indicators across all value-chain actors.
This white paper aims to address these challenges and gaps and to provide an understanding of and guidance for measuring sustainability in the manufacturing value chain. This paper is based on the research findings and publications of the projects Towards Transparent and Sus-tainable Value Chains (GG_Sustis2023, funded by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland), Sustainable Data-Based Business for Manufacturing Industry (DataAsset, funded by VTT Tech-nical Research Centre of Finland and Business Finland), Prestudy for Optimization for Extended Sustainability Requirements (PreOptimi, funded by the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra) and Kes-tävän kehityksen Nyrkki (Sustainability First) workshops. This paper focuses on the research findings on the wood-fibre-based value chain, obtained from a literature review, stakeholder in-terviews and workshops, covering the following topics:
• the background of and drivers for measuring sustainability in the manufacturing indus-try, focusing on the wood-fibre-based value chain;
• the sustainability data in the value chain;
• the sustainability key performance indicators (KPIs) in the value chain;
• the Scope 3 emission calculation as a more detailed example of a sustainability KPI; and
• the conclusion and future research topics on measuring sustainability in the manufac-turing value chain.

This white paper is intended for manufacturing companies that want to improve their sustaina-bility management and reporting, as well as for researchers, policymakers and other stakehold-ers interested in the topic of sustainability measurement. The paper provides practical infor-mation, examples and models for measuring sustainability, as well as insights for future re-search and development.
The authors thank all parties behind the GG_Sustis2023, DataAsset, PreOptimi and Kestävän kehityksen nyrkki projects, the company representatives participating in the discussions and the researchers involved in the previous joint publications (Rantala et al., 2022, 2023, 2024) under these projects.
Tampere, Wednesday, 24 April 2024
The Authors