Paris was the venue for the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) 2023 International Conference, https://poms2023.com/. The annual conference is hosted by the Rennes School of Business and supported by Lancaster University Leipzig and INSEAD. This year’s theme, “Operations Management & United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs),” addressed the role of tools and operations management concepts in transforming our world and their contribution to positively influencing the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

350 presentations by leading scientific experts in the industry attracted more than 500 participants and promised three intensive days full of impulses and exciting exchanges. A Syngroup team was on site. Here is their summary of the highlights and insights from the POMS International Conference 2023.

The world of Production and Operations Management is currently dominated by two dominant issues: sustainability and crisis management. In view of today’s global challenges, the issue of sustainability is increasingly coming into focus. In particular, the ESG criteria (Environment, Social, Governance) and the UN Sustainability Goals are being discussed intensively. The issue is how a sustainability strategy can be operationalized and how implementation can be made measurable. To this end, the interrelationships along the entire value chain must be understood in order to be able to derive concrete, implementable measures. The elements of “interrelationships” and “measurability” are also decisive success factors when it comes to crisis management. Companies that recognize anomalies at an early stage and know what effects and to what extent they can have along the value chain will gain a decisive competitive advantage.

One of the most important business quotes, Peter Drucker’s “if you can’ measure it, you can’t manage it” was regularly heard during the conference. Are we being served old wine in new bottles? No! Compared to the past, advancing digitization today offers unimagined opportunities to analyze interrelationships (to recognize patterns) and to take completely new approaches to implementation.

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In the 2^nd part of our report from POMS 2023, we look at the four most interesting of the “Themes & Tracks” from Syngroup’s point of view: Supply Chain Management, Digital Product Passport, Digital Twin and ESG.