GEP®, a leading provider of supply chain strategy and software to Fortune 500 and Global 2000 enterprises worldwide, announced today it has joined The World Economic Forum.
Today’s just-in-time global supply chains were designed to optimize costs and performance; as a result, most organizations lack sufficient transparency into waste, CO2 emissions, diversity and ethical practices from the world’s farms, factories and mines that power our economies.
GEP joins the WEF to partner with global business, government and technology leaders to shape how global supply chains can create a more sustainable, inclusive, diverse and equitable future.
The next three to five years will be pivotal in how emerging technologies — artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, robotics, and automation — will be applied to transform the world’s supply chains.
GEP will leverage its position as a leading provider of AI-driven supply chain software, insights and data to help the WEF ensure procurement and supply chains support minority businesses, foster environmental sustainability and enable fair market practices.
Without proactive private-public leadership, the juxtaposition — where technology dehumanizes decisions and rewards the lowest-cost suppliers over environmental and social aspirations and objectives — will be accelerated.
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“Without energetic leadership, technologies like AI and machine learning have the potential to do great good and great harm — perhaps most especially with the supply chain — against the important environmental and social goals that we in the global business community have set for ourselves,” said Subhash Makhija, chief executive officer and co-founder, GEP. “It’s imperative that we provide leadership that guides how organizations select suppliers to drive sustainability, diversity and ethical practices, as well as value.”
With more than half of the world’s GDP dependent on nature for its resources and services, supply chains have an outsized impact on the environment and society. In a similar vein, the world’s largest companies can help address diversity by providing economic opportunities to minority-owned businesses through procurement, because they have more cash on hand than the GDP of two-thirds of the world’s countries.
GEP will support the WEF to ensure emerging technologies provide organizations with greater visibility and accountability for running their complex, multi-geography, multi-tier supply chains in compassionate, environmentally sustainable and ethically responsible ways.
