Cardinal Health — Driving Big Sustainability Goals

Cardinal Health, a leading distributor of pharmaceuticals and medical/lab products operating in 30+ countries with 4,500+ sourcing partners and 140,000+ shipping locations, launched a digital transformation strategy centered on a 'cognitive supply chain' to combat pandemic disruption and shifting demand. A key challenge: its sustainability team's requests about transportation emissions or miles traveled required extensive manual work from transportation operations, taking a week or more and reducing productivity. The company also committed in 2021 to a Science-Based Target covering all of its emissions scopes — needing reliable data to track progress.

Cardinal Health partnered with FourKites for real-time visibility, machine learning and analytics as enablers of its cognitive supply chain. FourKites automated emissions tracking and calculations, turning week-long data pulls into a few clicks and making accurate emissions, transportation and sustainability data readily available — easing buy-in at both operational and executive levels. The platform lets shippers/carriers add equipment data per load for more accurate emissions estimates, and its quarterly Premier Carrier List (since April 2021) helps shippers partner with SmartWay carriers. Improved visibility on all shipments also helped teams accommodate the unpredictability of more sustainable intermodal moves.

With FourKites, tasks that once took a week or more can now be automated down to minutes, and the team accesses emissions data in a few clicks. As of Spring 2022, 98% of Cardinal Health's shipments moved via SmartWay carriers. The data availability enabled proactive sustainability planning and supported its goal to cut Scope 1 and 2 emissions 50% by 2030 vs. FY19.