# Support of Advanced Technologies in Supply Chain Processes and Sustainability Impact
## 5 Analysis and Discussion of Results
### Advanced Technologies Used to Support SCOR Processes  
A cross-case analysis was performed to explore the advanced technologies used by the researched companies to support SCOR processes. Figure 5 shows which of the advanced technologies proposed by [PERSON] et al. [98] are used by the companies in supporting each SCOR process. Figure 3: Advanced Technologies used by the case studies. According to Figure 5, Data analytics/Big Data is used by three companies involved in production of food and beverages to catering/retail for aviation, cork industry and EMS manufacturing to support all the SCOR processes. This technology, however, has not been adopted by two companies from the following three manufacturing sectors: the automotive sector (exhausts/seating/interiors), the refrigerator industry and the biomass industry. The industry is the most common among the automotive sector, and the industry is the most common among the automotive sector. Figure 4: Number of Advanced Technologies and SCOR processes supported by case study. Figure 5: Advanced technologies adoption by SCOR processes (in percentage). energy (torrefied biomass pellets). The SCOR processes where this technology is more commonly used are \"Plan\", \"Source\", \"Make\" and \"Deliver\". Regarding Visual technology (e.g., augmented reality, virtual reality, and holograms), this is rarely used by sample companies. Only three of the case studies use it: one (refrigerators) uses it to support the \"Plan\" and \"Source\" processes of the SCOR model; another from the metals and mining sector uses it in the \"Make\" process; and finally the case which is dedicated to assembly injection plastics uses Visual technology in supporting the \"Plan\" process. Attending to Intelligent control systems (use of AI techniques, such as expert systems, fuzzy logic, machine learning and neural networks), this technology is used by five case studies, two companies in the \"Source\" process, two in the \"Plan\" and one supporting the \"Make\". Company 6 which is dedicated to the production of food and beverages for catering/retail for aviation uses this technology in both the \"Plan\" and \"Source\" processes. Energy saving/efficiency technology is quite commonly used by our case studies in supporting many of the SCOR model's processes. It is used by six case studies, mostly in the \"Make\" process. It is also interesting to see that case study 1, which is a refrigerator manufacturer, uses this technology in all the SCOR processes. Case study 3 (a producer of exhausts/seating/interiors for the automotive sector) and case study 6 (catering/retail for aviation), use energy saving/efficiency technology in supporting the same three SCOR processes: Plan, Source and Make. Cases 2, 4 and 9 do not use yet this technology. Regarding smart products/parts/materials, these do not have so many followers as other advanced technologies considered in this study, since they are not used by five case studies. The producer of exhausts/seating/interiors, belonging to the automotive SC, is the only one that uses smart products/parts/material in three SCOR processes (\"Plan\", \"Source\" and \"Make\"). Another company, also from the automotive SC, which is a producer of wires and cables, uses it in the \"Plan\" and \"Make\" processes. The producer of refrigerators (case 1) uses it in the \"Make\" process and the producer of copper and copper alloys (case 5), belonging to the metals and mining SC, uses it in the \"Return\" process. Finally, the producer of automotive parts uses it in the \"Plan\" process. Cloud Computing technology is used by five case studies in supporting several SCOR processes. Only company 5, which belongs to the metals and mining SC, uses it in supporting just the \"Return\" process. Case 2 which belongs to the textile and clothing SC, uses cloud computing in all SCOR processes. For the producer of refrigerators (case 1) and the catering/retail for aviation producer (case 6), cloud computing is used to support the processes: \"Plan\", \"Source\", \"Make\" and \"Deliver\".