A Context-Based Sustainability Maturity Model for the Medical Device Manufacturers

Sustainability is seen as the imperative strategy to implement to reach sustained competitive advantage. However, sustainability principles should be incorporated by all the organisations within an industry to reap real long-term benefits. The organisations are expected to rethink their processes from the pre-development phase until the end-of-life disposal of goods. This can be extremely complicated, especially for industries like the healthcare industry involving multiple stakeholders, a wide supply chain and producing technology for a very specific use. These are just some of the reasons why the healthcare industry lags behind other industry fields when it comes to sustainable development. Within the healthcare industry supply chain, the medical device manufacturers play the major role when it comes to determine the impacts medical systems have on ecosystem and society. Indeed, by providing innovative sustainable solutions they can contribute to social welfare, healthcare and environmental protection from degradation. Therefore, the scope of this research will be limited to explore the inter dependencies between the medical device manufacturers and sustainable development. To this end, a maturity model will be designed as a practical tool to assess the level of sustainability maturity of the medical device organisations’ supply chain. The maturity model will be designed in such a way to favour a better understanding of the concept of Sustainable Supply Chain Management, offering a detailed overview of sustainability aspects and bottom-line indicators. From the latter, a gap analysis will be performed and will support companies to spot areas for improvement and to set up maturation strategies