Sustainable Automation Journey

Something really important for organizations is the commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals designed by the United Nations. There are 17 goals ranging from ‘No Poverty’ to ‘Peace’, ‘Justice’, and ‘Strong Institutions’. Each organization can contribute differently to these goals - depending on the industry where they are working in.
With the focus on logistics and manufacturing, we selected five goals of the SDGs, that are most obvious and where you definitely can contribute to. SMART objectives (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound), a tool created by George T. Doran in 1981, can help you with reaching these goals in your own organization. This handbook also provides a section on creating SMART goals in the chapter ‘Take Action!’.

The Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 4 - Quality Education and Life-Long Learning. This SDG is very attractive for organizations since it has a lot of potential to develop employees. Provide quality education to your employees and if possible, create possibilities in your community to impart education. Propagate the goal of lifelong learning in your organization and make it a habit to learn new things. This can be achieved with mentor-mentee programs, different types of seminars and workshops, starting with seminars to bring information and communication technology (ICT) skills to your employees. Make sure to take measures in such a way as to enable the organization as well as the employees to apply the new knowledge in their everyday lives.

SDG 5 - Gender Equality. The achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women and other finta* persons (female, inter, non-binary, trans, agender and other non cis-male) is a promising opportunity for your organization. In fact, you can decide right now to create a tolerating and enabling work environment and, consequently, attract more employees, especially young people. We recommend hiring finta* persons in managerial positions who can be role models for others in your organization. Programs to better educate finta* persons on management skills and to foster their personal development will accelerate this process. It is important to not forget that men are also part of this change. If you create programs to achieve gender equality, men should also play their role. Besides, with (robot) automation it is not important anymore if someone can lift 10kg or 40kg or how tall they are. On the contrary, regardless of gender, everyone can begin working in the logistics industry now.

SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth. This goal proposes two ideas. First, it tackles the topic of a decent work environment and conditions, and second, it deals with how to decouple economic growth from environmental degradation. The first part includes topics like protecting labor rights, equal pay for all, including people with disabilities, and all measures that you can take to make your environment fair for everyone. The second part of the SDG can be summarized as follows: By using sustainable and technological upgrades, your economic growth will be ready for the future.

SDG 9 - Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure. This goal says: “Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation”. The focus lies on sustainable and smart infrastructure. Besides, the goal ensures that prosperity is shared for all and no one is left behind from benefiting from industrial growth. One target (number 4) of this goal demands upgrading all industries and infrastructures for environmental compatibility. This means that, particularly, all old economies and industries need to adapt to make their operations sustainable.

SDG 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production Patterns. SDG 12 is about the efficient use of natural resources, which means domestic material consumption and material footprint including waste that productions create, for example, chemicals. This SDG proposes a reduction of waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling, and reuse.