Leading sustainable packaging provider, DS Smith plc, today announced it has selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its preferred cloud provider to accelerate innovation, drive efficiencies, and support sustainable solutions. DS Smith will focus on leveraging data to drive growth and efficiency across its business, including real time monitoring of manufacturing capacity and supply chain management in support of key sustainability targets.
DS Smith will use AWS’s global infrastructure, advanced analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies – including AWS’s generative AI services– to derive deeper business intelligence, deliver new digital customer experiences, and drive automation at scale across its supply chain.
Specifically, DS Smith will:
- Build a Data Factory using AWS, which will bring together data from across its business including machinery, facilities, logistics, processes and products. By applying machine learning algorithms built on AWS, and analytics to this data, DS Smith will gain actionable insights and make faster, more informed decisions to optimise operations, anticipate customer demand, and reduce waste and carbon emissions.
- Use AWS for real-time monitoring of its manufacturing capacity and supply chain, providing a holistic end-to-end view. This will enable an increasingly agile and responsive approach to supply chain management, for example by anticipating and addressing machine downtime using predictive maintenance.
To help achieve this, AWS will work with DS Smith to conduct an AWS Learning Needs Analysis (LNA) and provide AWS cloud skills training and development programmes. Examples include cloud-based 3D racing simulator AWS DeepRacer, gamified, collaborative learning through AWS GameDay, and problem solving via AWS Jams.
Claire Dickson, Group Chief Information Officer, DS Smith, commented: “Our journey to the future is already underway and AWS has a huge role to play. Digital and data solutions are going to revolutionize the way we grow, delight and support our customers and tackle some of our planet’s biggest sustainability challenges. Our business has changed dramatically over the last decade. It could be unrecognizable within another.”
Jeff Johnson, General Manager UKI, AWS, commented: “Moving to AWS will enable DS Smith to accelerate transformation and innovation by increasingly putting data at the heart of its business. We are proud to support DS Smith on their cloud migration journey, and to help them build and deliver innovative solutions that will form the foundation of the future of supply chains and manufacturing.”
Circularity sits at the heart of DS Smith’s business model and is core to the business’ purpose to Redefine Packaging for a Changing World. The collaboration with AWS will support key elements of DS Smith’s Now & Next Sustainability Strategy, which focuses on:
- Circularity – Designing out waste and pollution, and keeping materials in use
- Carbon – Decarbonising our operations and value chain
- People & Communities – Creating a safe, diverse and inclusive workplace and being active in our communities
- Nature – Protecting and regenerating nature
As part of Now & Next, the business has committed to reach Net Zero GHG emissions by 2050, and to an ambitious 1.5°C science-based target to reduce Scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG emissions by 46% by 2030 compared to 20191. Data is a key ingredient to delivering these goals, and AWS will help bring together data about machinery, facilities, logistics, people, processes and products to support the business in assessing where it can become more efficient – cutting waste and reducing carbon emissions.
About DS Smith
DS Smith is a leading provider of sustainable fiber-based packaging worldwide, which is supported by recycling and papermaking operations. It plays a central role in the value chain across sectors including e-commerce, fast-moving consumer goods and industrials.
Through its purpose of ‘Redefining Packaging for a Changing World’ and its Now and Next sustainability strategy, DS Smith is committed to leading the transition to the circular economy, while delivering more circular solutions for its customers and wider society – replacing problem plastics, taking carbon out of supply chains and providing innovative recycling solutions. Its bespoke box-to-box in 14-days model, design capabilities and innovation strategy sit at the heart of this response.
Headquartered in London and a member of the FTSE 100, DS Smith operates in more than 30 countries employing around 30,000 people and is a Strategic Partner of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Its history can be traced back to the box-making businesses started in the 1940s by the Smith family. North American operations are based in Atlanta, with 15 manufacturing, paper and recycling facilities, totaling more than 2,000 employees. DS Smith will report annually its progress across its climate targets in its Sustainability and Annual Reports.
1 The Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) validated DS Smith’s 1.5°C science-based target, to reduce Scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG emissions by 46% by 2030 compared to 2019 and to reach Net Zero GHG emissions by 2050.
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